


the sea screams and whitens (urla e biancheggia il mar)

by d8rkmessngr



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Misunderstandings, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protectiveness, Self-Harm, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:40:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27650141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d8rkmessngr/pseuds/d8rkmessngr
Summary: Trying to fit into her new family, Nile accidentally raises old memories of a time the team lost Nicky.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 81
Kudos: 320





	1. Chapter 1

"Back again, Ms. Liberté?"

It took a few seconds before Nile remembered _she_ was Ms. Liberté. She guessed her cover's black Amex card had made an impression. 

"I did not think you would be back so soon." The gallery's salesperson, Devon, was a tall and enviably thin brunette in a blush linen suit dress. She'd automatically switched from Italian to English with only a hint of an accent.

"Wanted to bring some friends to see it," Nile explained awkwardly, thinking she should have picked up some new clothes after all. Hopefully, Nile looked like an eccentric rich woman, not like someone who'd recently pulled off a break-in at a certain pharma no one should name. 

Copley had dug up reports different from the ones the pharma in their latest case had released to the public. He'd then anonymously forwarded the more accurate ones they'd found to the media. It had been just in time for the EU to pull back on their announcement about buying three million of the ineffective vaccines.

And now they were taking a break miles from Rome in a mountainside town called Ullria, far enough away that the news on their TV had only mentioned the crime in the third events-of-the day spot before moving on to the latest football scores. Not that their TV boasted enough channels to check out the actual game. And they were too early for skiing. 

Nile didn't care, though. She was in Italy. She hadn't thought the guys would actually agree to her suggestion about staying. Nile hadn't even known they'd had a safehouse tucked away up in the hills here until Nicky had—after a thoughtful moment contemplating her eager face—quietly suggested it.

"I didn't think it was going to be so crowded today," Nile added, surveying the entranceway. Andy had left her sunglasses on despite being indoors, a subtle comment on how she felt about the forty-minute wait to get inside amongst the packed crowd. 

But Nile noticed she hadn't insisted they leave. Nile made a face as she turned her head away from yet another selfie. At least not yet.

"It is the last week of viewing before the auction," Devon said with a Gaelic shrug. Her pronunciation was a lovely tumble of rolling syllables Nile's Duolingo app was still struggling to teach her. It didn't help that Andy had also insisted Nile learn Russian at the same time. 

Devon smiled, somehow seeing dollar signs despite Nile's oversized navy t-shirt and cargo pants. Her shirt had a faded logo of some Danish pop band she couldn't pronounce. Nile wasn't sure if the shirt's original owner was a fan; asking anything about him still felt intrusive even after three and a half months. 

"Perhaps there are other pieces that might interest you, too?" Devon asked, fixated on Nile as if she was the only client in the gallery. 

Nile glanced over at Joe, who was in line behind her next to Nicky. Joe just raised his brows inquiringly back at her. He'd presented Nile with a black Amex card in her cover's name when he and Nicky had caught up with them at an outdoor café yesterday evening. 

At Nile's surprised look, Joe'd grinned and said something about giving the store clerks a reason to cry. She'd thought he'd overheard Nile complaining to Andy about being snubbed in the Prada store during lunch. At the time, she'd sort of been touched. Now, Nile narrowed her eyes at Joe's overly innocent raised eyebrows. She wondered if a credit check on her cover's name showed more than a single Amex card. 

Nicky and Nile had picked out fresh fruit and pastries from the market stalls for everyone's breakfast yesterday morning during their last morning in Rome. While looking over oranges, Joe had gently suggested Nile shop for things she could leave in their various safe houses like the one they were heading out to. It would be better than Nile borrowing whatever shirts Booker had left behind. She should have things of her own. He'd urged her to have fun. Even try out some of the overpriced Italian shops along the piazza.

Nile had learned to recognize them, the awkward pauses or beats in conversations where Booker was supposed to answer, even as the others worked up to a fragile status quo of not having him there. Respecting that it did not help to be wandering around in Booker's old clothes, Nile had agreed to go shopping that day. Who knew shopping would be full of so much drama?

Which is why she'd wound up in that part of Ullria without any new clothes and feeling pretty dispirited. She'd spotted the sign for the local art gallery and had decided to make herself feel better. 

And that's when she'd seen it.

The most perfect of all distractions.

But maybe she'd been a little too distracted.

Because now Nile remembered the colorful slick pamphlet Devon had pressed into her hand by the end of her visit after disappearing for several minutes behind her monitor station to check on something. The elegant, gilded script announcing the week-long showing of a rediscovered Baroque sculptor and Devon delicately suggesting if Nile was so enamored with the collection, she might like a chance to revisit it. 

No doubt the hour she'd spent taking photos, as well as the Black Amex and whatever friends Joe had included with it on Nile's credit report, was the reason for Devon's treating Nile like an old friend. The irony of it was pretty funny considering how'd she'd been treated just across the street by the folks in the fashion shops.

"You are fortunate." Devon managed to sound both charmingly careless and subtly eager for any chit-chat Nile might want to have with her at the same time. 

"Leo is doing another English-language lecture on what beautiful works were rediscovered after the earthquake. If your friends like, he is ahead in front of what you have already discovered, just after the sketchbook pages."

Nile scanned the gallery. Despite the crowd, the stark white space was spacious, half walls creating makeshift alcoves to display art and objects going to auction after the final showing.

Andy was begrudgingly inspecting the signage beside a set of decorative daggers by the main entrance. She was dressed in her usual goth all-black attire, her stiff posture and shades all but proclaiming, "look, I'm here, alright? Leave me alone." Tourists gave Andy a wide berth, steering for the collection of miniature horse pins and jewelry instead.

Nile should feel guilty about insisting they all go. But she knew Andy would be glad once she realized why Nile had brought her along. Andy, for all her grim expressions, had a wicked sense of humor. And she wasn't the only one. Joe and Nicky were dragging Andy purse shopping after this of all things. Joe had promised the evening would not be complete until they had all seen a tiny pink bag hanging off Andy's elbow. 

Andy, it seems, had lost a bet. It had something to do with the fluffy white sheep grazing near the grounds of their safe house. Nicky had kept sharing little smirks with Joe about it all along the drive up. Joe had hinted that the bag might even need to have glitter on it. Nicky had nodded solemnly at this and opined to Nile, "for want of a sheep, Andy must now have appropriate evening attire." 

Nile didn't even ask what the joke was or how far back this bet had been lost, just the thought of a glittering pink evening bag…on Andy.

This though…this might just top that. 

Trying not to appear impatient, Nile gestured to Joe and Nicky to move forward past the cases of sketches by various artists. She bit back a grin when the two dutifully moved closer. She didn't dare to try to be too pushy or get Andy yet. It would be too obvious. 

"…look at the design on the pommel," Joe complained as they drew near one that involved a sword. "What were they thinking?"

Nicky shot Joe a sideways glance, a small upturn at the corner of his mouth. He murmured a response, tone serene yet managing to also be amused at the same time. It sounded like Italian. Kind of. 

Whatever it was, Joe guffawed. He hooked a hand around Nicky's elbow to turn him back towards the previous display.

"No, wait, I'll show you, Nicky…" Joe snickered. "How a weapon should be used."

"Come on, guys," Nile laughed. "Wrong way." 

She nodded her head to where a tall, heavyset man, presumably Devon's Leo, who wore a charcoal gray tailored suit, lumbered to stand beside a cloaked pedestal set up in the center of the main room. Above him were three unlit spotlights around the gallery's veiled centerpiece. A tiny speaker set up just past the display squealed as Leo readied his wireless microphone. 

"There is Leo, the gallery owner," Devon offered. "I will find you after his presentation. We will be serving wine and cheese."

Nile waited until the woman was out of earshot. She grabbed Nicky's sleeve, knowing Joe would follow. Nicky shot Joe an eyebrow but gamely let himself be tugged to the other side of the glass cases with sketches and towards the center of the gallery.

"We could give you a personal tour," Nicky murmured to her, tucking her hand into the crook of his elbow and somehow making her tug into a gentlemanly gesture.

"Nicky and I both know better stories about these things," Joe added, grinning wickedly. 

"And spend the rest of the day trying to figure out what part was real and which part was bullshit?" Nile mock glared at Joe. "No thanks."

Joe threw her a "who me" gesture grabbing his chest, along with an over-the-top wounded expression.

No, Nile wasn't bitter about that museum in Prague. Where Joe had solemnly told what she later realized were outrageous fibs about one artifact after another. It didn't help that Nicky had played along, nodding solemnly as Joe spun a tale about a wicked looking bronze dagger on display. She should have been more suspicious when Joe explained it was really a toenail trimmer for some warlord's nephew who lost it in an ancient game similar to strip poker with Andy. 

It was Andromache's favorite game, Nicky deadpanned, and Joe burst out laughing at Nile's open-mouthed expression. They'd made too much noise, were politely asked by security to get the fuck out, and Nile had missed out on the tapestries exhibit she had wanted to check out in the first place.

No. Not bitter at all. Nope.

"...unknown for quite a long time." They wormed their way forward along with the crowd as Leo led off with the introduction to the exhibit and the sculpture behind the curtain. 

"There were brief mentions in records, of course, but not much else was known until the earthquake in 2013." Just the top of a ghostly projection of an architectural schematic image shimmering onto the expansive gallery walls was visible beyond the crow. In front of it, Nile knew the curtained pedestal stood waiting. 

"A secret. A hidden room under his villa in a section we now know used to be part of his estate. As the structure was being restored, crews uncovered it beyond the cellar. They could hardly believe their eyes when they broke through at what they had discovered." Segments of a darkened cellar in black and white now filled the edges of her view. 

"Nicky, what do you think about this?" Joe's voice broke in quietly at her shoulder. "Didn't we have something like this in '09?" he asked speculatively.

Nicky halted their movement forward to look past Nile at the display that had caught Joe's attention in a nearby alcove. He squinted, tilting his head. "It is possible. We will look afterward."

"...Clearly influenced by the school of Bernini. Rare considering most Baroque sculptors lost favor around his time. If you look at the display imagery we've recreated on the walls. You can see the bodies are positioned in what the Renaissance used to call _'De Divina Proportione'_ or the divine proportion."

"Guys, we're missing his talk," Nile urged. 

Nicky shook his head, smiling to himself, but at least he murmured to Joe they shouldn't dawdle. 

So, of course, Joe stopped to comment on something else. This time on the other side of the gallery that he'd spotted past the crowd. Argh. Wait. Could he be doing this to mess with her? Nile shot Joe a narrow-eyed look.

"...yes," Leo chuckled, encouraging several of the tourists to giggle at something that was now being projected. "I know what it looks like. This artist does seem to have a rather intense appreciation of the male body."

Leo's voice boomed louder to encourage people to inch closer to the pedestal.

"There were letters where he defended his works as carved from the word of God. However, with this recent discovery, experts theorized his inspiration may have been of a more..." Leo paused dramatically, "Sexual nature." More giggles. 

"Now you know why we insisted you must be eighteen and older? You, sir, are you old enough to be here? A grandfather? Hmmph. A likely story." This earned Leo a few laughs from the crowd. 

"Well, the notes they found with this piece said it was a study. Hm, a study of what or _whom_?" The round of giggles almost drowned out Leo's next comment. 

"There are theories the sash that looped around each subject represented how high he held them in favor…" 

Nile craned her neck from the back of the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of the image of the small practice statues now being projected as the three of them slowly wound past a group of Portuguese tourists. But it was still mostly hidden from view by all the bodies in the way. 

"...it's a shame not many pieces survived." Leo sounded regretful. "Not even the practice statues. He gifted many to his wealthy patrons, but those were lost to time. He died at such a young age before he could reveal what he claimed was his most precious masterpiece." 

Leo lowered his voice to a stage whisper. 

"Late eighteenth-century records said he was murdered in his bed, his lovers all dead in his home." Leo's voice fell to the confiding tone like he was imparting a secret to the wide-eyed crowd. 

"Yes, that's right. Lovers, as in plural. It is said that thieves broke into his villa and took everything of value. His lovers, who were theorized to have also been his models, fought in his defense. Tragically, they all died, heartbroken with grief at his feet."

"Thanks to this huge find, Matteo de Biffoli will be lauded as the Michelangelo of his time..."

With a grand gesture, the curtain was pulled to the side. 

Nile pressed forward when she spied the white statute just behind Leo's shoulder that she had seen the afternoon before, eager for the others to see it too. 

Nile tugged at Nicky, who had abruptly stopped in his tracks. 

Leo's voice rose higher like a showman's call, getting ready for his finale.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Leo said in well-practiced breathlessness. "Galleria di Rosa is most honored to welcome..."

"Nicky?" Nile asked, puzzled at his frozen expression. Just beyond him, Joe was staring, too.

Joe swore something under his breath. 

Nicky suddenly surged forward. This time he was the one dragging Nile, her fingers curled on his rigid elbow. Joe at their back. 

"Sorry, _scusi_ ," Nile stammered. She found herself and Nicky standing in front of the crowd.

"Our newest national treasure," Leo drew out. Nile was surprised there wasn't a drumroll. " _Il tormento del favorito_ , Matteo de Biffoli's study piece number fifty-three!"

On cue, the three spotlights flared as Leo stepped aside. People gasped at the sculpted male nudes carved in a heap on the polished stone now highlighted. Another set of male bodies knelt on top of them, their faces turned adoringly upward, hands clutching each other like a passion play.

A man with a physique typical of many Roman statues stood over them all. It was the only one without a face, just a mouth suggesting an indulgent smile in the carved stone of a warrior. 

The muscular arms flung upward, a victorious fist held high above his head while clutching a wide band that threaded throughout the entire tableau, asking one's eyes to follow it. The warrior figure's robes spilled open to reveal a thick torso, legs and a hint of what hung in-between. Muscled thighs, so detailed, Nile swore they flexed the first time she'd seen the statue. They straddled a final lithe male body, the titled favorite, arched like a dancer rising up towards the arm. 

Where the other bodies had the sash woven among limbs, the broad ribbon spilled down into detailed folds around the final figure's neck and into his nude lap. The triumphant figure cradled the back of the subject's head, which was turned away from the viewer. 

Long strands of hair curtained most of the face in the sculpture, but the distinct shape of a strong nose and the curve of the mouth of Nicolo di Genova was unmistakable. She should know. She'd spent five hours packed in a car next to it along all the windy and sheep ridden way up from Rome. 

Nile tipped her face up to Nicky, who was still staring at the statue.

"So," Nile quipped. "I can't wait for you guys to tell me the story about this one."


	2. Chapter 2

Before Nicky could reply, an alarm blared. The three beams of light abruptly turned red. A few visitors murmured, fidgeting.

"It's fine, everything's fine," Leo chuckled as he waved off the two blue-uniformed security officers approaching from the sides. The crowd parted nervously as Leo continued, gesturing with magician's hands. 

The alarms silenced. It was strange, the gallery suddenly quiet after being loud for so long.

"You need to stay behind the dotted line, sir," Leo chided someone as he again gestured security back. 

Nile spotted Joe with one foot on the perimeter line around the display. Wait, hadn't he been behind them before?

Joe turned his head a fraction, acknowledging and dismissing Leo at the same time. The beams cast red-tinged shadows under the furrowed ridge of Joe's brow.

Leo's smile faltered at whatever he saw on Joe's face. Nile glanced up and then immediately ducked her head; three CCTV lens' pinpoint red recording lights blinked above them.

"Um. Sir? You need to step back." Leo flicked a nervous look to the guards he'd previously waved off. 

"Hey Joe," Nile called out lightly, "no need. I got a decent zoom lens with my phone, remember?" There was something in Joe's closed face that made her skin prickle. 

Nile checked for possible exits. More blue uniforms lingered in the back, hands on their batons. Andy was stalking her way forward, frowning, puzzled, but determined to act, no questions asked.

"Joe," Nicky murmured. Nile jumped. She forgot she still had her fingers hooked onto Nicky's sleeve. He stood outside of the lights, out of camera range, his right shoulder turned to partially cover Nile's face.

Joe's stormy expression eased, the murderous cast slipping off. He smiled congenially at Leo, who blinked uncertainly still. Joe took an exaggerated step back, his hands up. "Oops," Joe quipped. 

Leo lost the twitch in his posture, his ruddy round face back to the cheery mien. 

"It's all right," Leo boomed. Nevertheless, he squirmed until he was between Joe and the statue. 

"It is an amazing piece," Leo said, louder for the crowd still hanging back. Leo seemed to forget he was holding the wireless microphone. "After all, it's what you're all here to see unless it was those horse miniatures in the back."

The crowd chuckled. The terse air dissipated.

Leo smiled encouragingly at Joe as he patted the pockets of his suit jacket. "You're Ms. Liberté's guest, yes? If you want a closer look, the gallery offers private showings and—"

Joe grimaced. "No, thank you—"

Leo talked over Joe. "You could also purchase the gallery book of this showing when it's available for sale in two days. There's an entire section dedicated to Biffoli's statues—"

"There's a book?" Joe growled. And Leo nervously dropped his microphone. The speaker behind Leo squealed.

"Joe?" Nicky interrupted firmly. Joe looked back at Nicky. After a beat, Joe nodded jerkily, recollecting himself. 

Joe offered a shaken Leo a smile with too many teeth. "No. We do not want any books."

"Come," Nicky murmured, in a far too even tone. He waited as Joe stepped forward, the alarms sounding again and picked up the microphone, returning it to poor Leo. "I want a cappuccino."

Joe shrugged apologetically at Leo. He stepped back. "Sorry, not our kind of art." 

"I could use a biscotti myself," Joe said easily as he turned away. 

Something still klaxoned deep within Nile, even as the crowd turned back to Leo and the statue.

"...ah, the art is very emotional for some, who can blame him?" Leo recovered, back to sounding jovial again as a few chuckled. "Where was I? Ah, yes. This is one of the best representations of..."

"Nile, we'll see you and Andy later," Joe said, but he was looking at Nicky. 

"Enjoy the rest of the _galleria_ ," Nicky told Nile. He gave her a small smile. Joe smiled as well. Or tried to, but there was something very off about it. 

Nile didn't have a chance to offer to go with them, or protest or—she wasn't sure what she wanted to do. There was a knot in her stomach winding tighter and tighter. By the time she could breathe around it, the two were already slipping back towards the exit door. 

"What is it?" Andy elbowed through the crowd without apology to reach Nile. 

Nile stared at the direction where Joe and Nicky had left. Leo's lecture petered to a buzz in her ears. "I'm not sure. I think I made a mistake. I thought it would be funny, like the toenail clippers, but…"

Andy's took in the statue in an all-encompassing sweep and hissed a curse. 

"Ah, Ms. Liberté," Devon chose that moment to return, spotting Nile behind Andy. "Wonderful, yes?" She crooned when she noticed Andy staring hard at the stone profile. "There has been so much interest in it already even before the auction was announced."

Nile had thought it was beautiful yesterday. She'd come upon the statue already after it's daily unveiling and thought it breathtaking. It was an example of why she'd wanted to go to art school after her tour of duty. The way the marble looked so real. So smoothly carved. Plus, she'd thought it would lead to another set of outrageous stories like with Andy's Rodin. She'd been mesmerized by it. The details. 

Right now, though, Nile couldn't bear to look at it anymore. She was sensing she'd royally put her foot in it, though she wasn't certain how. But the more she stared at Andy's flinty eyes on the sculpture, the more the strange lurching sensation in her gut pounded.

"...an impressive mastery of detail." Devon drew out a stiff ivory business card, a match to the one she'd offered Nile yesterday. She extended it to Andy.

"Beautiful, do you agree?" Devon's card hovered in the space between her and Andy. "If you and your friend would like a private showing, I can arrange it."

Andy's eyes dragged away from the object to the one in front of her.

Devon's card wavered.

"It's disgusting," Andy spat out. She ignored Devon's card. "C'mon." She spun on her heels and stormed back through the crowd, her expression stony. 

Nile went after Andy, not caring if it looked like she was running. 

\-----

Andy and Nile both wore practical shoes with thick soles. One never knew when running was needed or the occasional leaping on top of moving vehicles after certain squishy mortal Scythians did.

Andy's steps stomped across the piazza's stones in front of her, like hooves of a charging warhorse.

Andy didn't bother asking Nile where Joe and Nicky were, nor did she call their cell. Their leader always seemed to just know where any of them were. Once, Nile had been pinned down by RPG carrying mercenaries (Really? Seriously? When had that become a thing?). She'd been separated from the rest of the guys, crouching low and scuttling behind AC units across a rooftop. Seeing no other options, she'd been contemplating (and dreading) making the eighteen-story jump to the shorter building next to her. 

The decision had been taken out of Nile's hands when Andy had shown up with her ax. When the smoke (literally) had cleared, they'd ridden the elevator down to reunite with the others. It was both anti-climactic and a relief.

That same instinct seemed to be currently fueling Andy's trajectory around the corner. She didn't think it was an immortal thing. It was probably an Andy thing. Then again, maybe it was a pre-designated meetup point. Except that was supposed to be the gelateria in the narrow street behind them. It was the one tourists bypassed for the flashier Instagram worthy one along the main thoroughfare. 

Nicky mentioned they had known the proprietor's great-great-great (Nile lost track of how many greats) uncle. Out of distantly associated loyalty (or Joe's hilarious obsession with their pistachio nut gelato), they made it their rendezvous point in case they'd needed to scatter. 

Andy wove them around clusters of tourists too busy taking selfies to look up, into the town's center. Its stone staircase reminded Nile of the Spanish steps in Rome. It ran up to the piazza then split into two narrower ones that unfurled around the square. They bookended ancient fountains and rolled on into the next terrace, climbing up and leveling out into the main street that bisected the town. 

A makeshift café greeted them under one staircase's overhang. It was tucked away. Nile realized you couldn't spot it until you were much closer. It was a coffee trolley that had been daisy-chained to a bakery display cart. A chalkboard menu written in Italian and English propped up against the cart's wheels declared they were the best in town. Round cafe tables dotted the area; their faded blue and green painted surfaces stood out in a sea of bleached travertine stone and hanging flower baskets. 

Despite its claims, the café's tables were mostly empty. The tourists preferring to eat the café's wares and feed the pigeons out in sunnier spots by the fountains.

At a small table that barely fit two chairs, much less four were Joe and Nicky. They'd chosen a table under the shadow of the stairs' gentle sweep. Joe and Nicky sat shoulder to shoulder to make space for Andy and Nile. 

Only Joe looked up to give a curt nod to Andy. He raised a hand, beckoning them in. There were already four drinks on the table and a paper napkin with biscotti carefully stacked on top.

Andy unceremoniously dropped into a crooked wooden chair across from the two men. She commandeered the only espresso on the table. She threw it back like a vodka shot.

Joe grunted. He glanced over at Nicky, sipping his glass of water, then returned to the biscotti he was dismantling with a plastic knife. For some reason, Joe appeared determined to gouge out the gems of hazelnuts. 

Nile sat down in the seat closest to Joe, although that was an exaggeration. Joe's seat was flushed to Nicky's and their chairs were pushed back against the staircase. Andy's chair was within arm's reach of Nicky's. Nile couldn't help thinking they would have to kick the table over to get any elbow room if they had to fight. 

A tall, sweating glass slid over to Nile. When she looked up, she couldn't figure out who had actually nudged over the iced mocha.

No one appeared to be in the mood to talk. The questions on the tip of Nile's tongue evaporated when she spied Nicky focused blankly past Andy's ear, his glass of water going up and down more out of habit.

Lowering her eyes, Nile poked the straw into her mocha. Someone had ordered her favorite chocolate and sea salt with caramel drizzle. The lines of sweet bled down the inside of her glass.

"Gallery closes at 2000," Andy said out of the blue. She plucked a biscotti from Joe's pile and drew an invisible square on the table with it. "The street they're on has one way in, but two ways out. Pedestrians only. There'll be a lot of foot traffic."

The plastic knife clattered onto the table. Joe leaned in and studied Andy's biscotti with a furrowed brow. 

"Two front entrances." Joe maneuvered two hazelnut shards towards Andy. "One with a wheelchair ramp, the other is a double door. Automatic, battery-powered, not connected to their main power." He plopped two chunks of biscuit opposite of them. "Service entrances in the back, but the driveway is down the corner. No keycards. Palm sensors."

Nile swallowed when Andy and Joe's gazes slid over to her. 

"CCTV cameras?" Nile ventured. She reviewed her memory. Andy had told Nile to always be aware of her surroundings. But it was only a small gallery, in a little town, showing Baroque statues and metalwork of unknown artists for twenty euros. 

Nile pinched the top of the straw as she mentally counted. 

"Seven, no, ten. There were three positioned over the statue, I think." Nile glanced over to Nicky.

Nicky nodded his head. "Yes, three," he agreed absently. The shadows under his eyes seemed darker while he stared at his glass. The untouched cappuccino between him and Joe was losing its foamy head, its chocolate shavings sinking out of sight.

Joe's chair scraped against stone as he turned towards Nicky. Nicky winced at the sound. He tried to cover it with a deliberately long drink of water. 

"Nicky." Andy sat forward in her chair. Her tone was gentle; the fury on her face in the gallery was gone. 

"We can do this tonight," Andy said. She nodded in Joe's and then Nile's direction. 

Nile swallowed her questions and nodded.

"Fifty-three." Nicky gazed at Andy. 

"He said it was number fifty-three?" Nicky's eyes flicked over to Joe.

Nile fumbled out the pamphlet she'd kept folded in her back pocket. She'd worried earlier one of them would have spotted it before she could convince them to come. Now, she pulled it out quickly, tearing the trifold in the process. 

"They, the archeologists, uh, they recovered nine intact. They're restoring some at…I mean, the gallery owned the rest because they sponsored the…" Nile looked up helplessly. The lingering taste of coffee and chocolate soured on her tongue. 

"Nine. The gallery has nine of them."

"Nine," Joe spat out. 

"Out of..." Nicky didn't finish. He looped a finger into the cappuccino cup's handle. He didn't pick up the drink, though.

"I promised I would track down each and every one," Joe said, low. His eyes stayed on Nicky like he'd forgotten Andy and Nile were there. 

"And I told you, I did not need such a promise," Nicky murmured. A corner of his mouth lifted. He lifted up the cup, his focus suddenly fixed on the drink. "I remember that much, at least."

"Nicky, I'm sorry…" Unbidden, Nile reached for Nicky. 

Shockingly Nicky flinched back, quickly recovered, but the abrupt movement had already tipped the porcelain cup out of his hand before he righted it. A muddy brown pool of cappuccino spread across the table. 

Andy caught the cup before it rolled off. Joe threw a stack of napkins onto the puddle before the coffee wept over the table edge and into Nicky's lap.

"Shit, Nicky, I-I," Nile stammered. Stunned, she couldn't move, unable to look away from Nicky. Nicky didn't flinch at anything. Not at gunfire, not at bad guys carving holes in you, not anything. 

"You surprised me," Nicky said like he was commenting on the weather. 

A surprise was Andy banging on their door at the ass o'clock of dawn yesterday morning, hollering that they needed to get a move on for their road trip north. Nicky remarking it was good weather for a drive and Joe's voice grumbling, saying maybe they should stay in another day because it might rain. Then Andy grabbing Joe by the ear and dragging him out, blanket barely hanging around his hips. Nicky in the doorway draping himself across Joe's shoulder, equally surprisingly bare-chested, murmuring that he'd be glad to help him stay warm. While Nile ran laughing past them, covering her eyes, saying she was too young for whatever that was as she stole the bathroom. 

That, that was a surprise. 

She didn't know what the hell this was. 

"I didn't mean to—Here, let me buy you another one." Right now, Nile felt an urge to cover her eyes again but for a different reason. 

"You surprised me. I will fix it," Nicky repeated. He brushed hands down his dry lap. He rose to his feet, tensing and waving Joe and Nile off when they did the same.

Andy remained in her seat. She didn't even glance down when a trickle of coffee dribbled down to pool by her foot.

"So I have to buy a proper purse. That's the deal, right?" Andy yanked the conversation to a new topic with little to no subtlety. But her eyes followed Nicky. "For Copenhagen." 

Copley had already suggested the next mission. Andy had accepted it for them before she'd realized the best way to infiltrate the organization was to attend an anniversary dinner that cost ten thousand euros a plate. They'd had a good laugh at Copley's careful suggestion that her raggedy guitar case fitted out for her labrys wasn't exactly appropriate attire.

"Uh..." Nile checked with Andy again. She stared at Nile, her face impassive behind her sunglasses, her posture alert and ready as always. 

Nile sat down again next to Andy. "Right. The bet. We get to choose it."

"Get Andy that pink one you told me about." Joe's tone was light, but his eyes said something different as he remained standing.

"No," Andy growled. "I told you. No pink."

"Come on, boss," Joe wheedled seemingly automatically. It hurt to hear how half-hearted it was. "Just see how it looks. Give Nile a chance to use that Amex."

"Take pictures," Nicky said lightly, but his gaze didn't stay with her for too long. "We will wait for you back at the house."

Andy grunted. She tipped her head up to Nicky. Her mouth pressed thin.

"You sure?" Andy asked quietly. It sounded like a hundred questions rolled into one.

Nicky nodded. "All good here, boss."

Joe opened his mouth but snapped it shut. Instead, he edged his way around the table to stand by Nicky. "See you back at the house," Joe agreed. 

"Nicky," Nile blurted out. "I...before...I didn't mean…" 

"It is all right, Nile. I was surprised," Nicky repeated like they were only talking about the coffee. Something flitted across Nicky's face, something Nile's heart responded to with an ache. "It was a long time ago and I was not expecting the reminder," Nicky offered, with a smile that died so quick it was hardly there. "Just surprised." 

Beside him, Joe's hands clenched into fists. But he only moved to follow Nicky as they both turned away.

Nile stared after them. She watched them take the steps down toward the fountains. Then the pair disappeared around a corner, not appearing to talk along the way. Next to her, Andy breathed evenly, measured, and meditative. On Nile's other side, coffee continued to drip in steady plops off the table.

"Andy, this isn't about Joe being mad about that statue." Nile squeezed the pamphlet in her grasp.

"He's mad," Andy muttered. "Just not for the reason you think."

"Then why—"

Andy stood up, her chair screeching across the floor.

"Let's walk." Andy settled a hand on Nile's shoulder. "We're going shopping."

"Andy—" Nile shook her head, her braids swaying against her neck. "Maybe we should go back—"

"No. Not now." Andy's voice was clipped. 

Nile stared at Andy, dismayed. "—Andy, I want to help."

Andy exhaled. She squeezed Nile's shoulder once.

"Walk with me," Andy said, softer. "Right now, we need to look for purses. Let's start with any shops that overlook that gallery."

Nile checked the empty staircase once. She looked at their table, at the destroyed biscotti and the coffee drying into a dirty stain. She grimly nodded.


	3. Chapter 3

Nile didn't find a pink purse for Andy, but she did find a red and gold striped rhinestone one (it was by some fancy name that made it a lot more than Nile thought it should cost, considering she could make the same thing with a hot glue gun). The appalled look on Andy's face made her momentarily forget about why they had doubled back to the shop directly across from the gallery. She coaxed Andy to hang it in the crook of her right elbow. It was so ugly. Nile took a picture, Andy's scowl, and all. Biting her lip, she sent it to Joe and Nicky. 

Joe replied back with a laughing emoji. There was no reply from Nicky.

Nile honestly hadn't thought they would buy anything. They'd spent most of their time noting where the CCTV's were along each street leading to the gallery. Then the roof access to all the surrounding buildings. Andy clearly measuring distances with a pursed mouth and a calculating eye. She didn't bother hiding it. She'd been mostly silent as they fake shopped down the row of luxury and knock-off stores.

Nile suspected they had made the last circuit more because Andy was stalling going back than any other reason. The sun was past their heads and sinking down in the other direction when Andy finally admitted they were done. However, she didn't turn to make their way to the safe house outside of town. Instead, she started up one of the town's walkways that continued on and wound up its many hills, not checking to see if Nile followed. 

White churches and primary-colored ski resorts, currently closed for the season, dotted the sloped land; they boasted gazebos for a picturesque view of the town and the sea just visible on the horizon. As they climbed, the slick signs pointing to the various locations gradually petered away and the walkway's cobblestone simply became dirt.

They arrived at a gazebo that was barely visible through the dense line of trees and overgrowth. Its stone foundation was covered with slimy moss, so thick it was inky black in some sections. The wooden frame rose high, but it lost part of its red scalloped roof. A few gnarled nests clung stubbornly to surviving rafters. It smelled like overripe fruit and damp wood.

A weathered green tin sign printed in Italian with one of those universal cartoon icons of a person and an exclamation point hung on a flimsy rusty chain that spans the width of the area. There was another sign: older, a plaque in Italian, its etched metal words worn away. All Nile could read was 185—and the last digit was worn down to an orange rusted patina. 

Nile was about to ask if it was safe, but Andy climbed over the chain and steered for one of the railings still reasonably intact.

"Uh. Shouldn't we head back?" Nile tested the structure with a ginger tap of her foot. It groaned once. Andy gazed down, looking offended.

"Took us months to help rebuild everything after the wildfires," Andy groused. "You would think they'd take better care of all this."

Nile didn't ask who was the "us" were or when the wildfires had taken place. It was still hard to hear about forgotten years blithely dropped into conversations with some form of ancient "you had to be there" attitude. 

One day that would be her. Nile didn't want to think about it just yet.

"Nile." Andy stared steadily at her, waiting. 

Nile took a deep breath. She dropped all their shopping bags next to the warning sign and stepped over the chain.

Luckily (or worryingly), the gazebo only creaked twice as Nile made her way to Andy. Arms out like a plane, Nile tiptoed to Andy, but she refused to sit on the railing. She sat down on the ground. Andy rolled her eyes.

"You, like, fed me three gelatos," Nile joked weakly. "I better not. And you better not fall. You'll break every bone. Don't forget you're squishy now."

Andy rolled her eyes again. She twisted around, ignored Nile's yelp and sat facing the lands that rolled out into the horizon. She stared past the town, towards the thin visible strip of blue-gray sea. 

"There," Andy said suddenly. She pointed to something at their two o'clock. "Adriatic Sea is to our left. The Ionian Islands, or at least that's what they're called now, to the right. Ithaki should be in that direction."

Nile squinted. "I don't see anything," she confessed.

Andy grunted. "You wouldn't. We're too far away. There used to be a fishing village in one of the smaller islands in the 1780s. Bracia. Storms wiped it out completely a century later."

Nile narrowed her eyes, trying to imagine where or what Andy pointed to. She made a note to try and find it later on Google Earth.

"That's where the first body washed up."

Nile turned sharply to Andy, but Andy was still looking towards Bracia.

"We, Joe and Nicky and..." Andy rubbed her left gauntlet with her other hand, her mouth pressed thin. "We heard about a cursed man living in Bracia."

"Was this Boo—" 

"No," Andy said, clipped. "A few decades before Booker joined us. We weren't searching for him yet. Like I said, there was a man we needed to find. Hiram Jasper."

Andy's jaw flexed. Her eyes glittered dark like a storm-swollen sky.

"Hiram's father was one of the crew."

"Crew?" Nile tensed. "You mean Quynh?"

Andy's head bobbed once. "Most of the crew aboard the ships died of old age or illness by then. Every time we caught up to one, it was too late, or they were too far gone to remember anything useful."

With a rough sound, Andy pulled up her right knee to her chest.

"When Hiram was a boy, he'd snuck on board his father's ship. He was there when she was thrown into the sea."

"How did you know?" Nile whispered. She gazed out into the horizon where Andy indicated.

"We were in Spain, tracking one of the first mates. We were too late. But Joe overheard a sailor talk about a man sickened with madness in Bracia. They said he was cursed after hearing the screaming of a witch in an iron coffin. Hiram was never the same since. His family kicked him out after his father died, ranting about a witch as well. They were certain the son cursed the family."

Andy frowned. It wasn't clear if it was for the son or the family.

"There's not much you could do then to stay out of the workhouses, so he went to the seas."

Andy's mouth twisted, her eyes glittering dark.

"The very thing that drove him mad. And he grew worse as the years went by until his last crew stranded him on Bracia. Hiram wandered the village, telling stories about the witch in exchange for food and a place to sleep."

Nile swallowed. She pulled her eyes away from the horizon. Echoes of screams lost in the water throbbed in Nile's ears. 

"So you three went to Bracia." Nile absently tugged at her right ear. The screams quieted back into memory.

"We asked around as soon as our ship reached Bracia, but for days, nothing." 

Andy idly picked at the edge of her gauntlet. She continued staring far away. Nile wondered if Andy was searching for distance or her memory. 

"First body washed up on the shores the third day we were there. No one knew him. He was too bloated from all that time in the sea. Couldn't even guess which country he was from." 

The beam under Andy creaked as she rested her arm on top of her knee.

"We thought he fell overboard from a ship." Andy scowled at the memory. "It fitted. The body had wounds, limbs contorted and every bone was broken. The clothing—what's left of them—were rags. Joe thought the boy starved at some point, too. We've experienced it enough times to recognize how it sits on the skin."

Nile carefully sat down next to Andy, her shoulder brushing against Andy's stiff back. Andy shifted, tension bleeding away until she was slumped back against Nile. It was only a moment and then she straightened up. 

"Nicky recognized a coin stitched into the clothing. Currency from the kingdom of Naples. Made sense. Shipwrecks washed up on either shore all the time. Nicky worried someone would be looking for the boy."

Nile nodded. She thought about her dog tags, the ones that had hung on her neck ever since the day she'd started boot camp, the ones she'd made Dizzy swear she'd be the one to retrieve them if they couldn't bring Nile back to her family. Her dog tags were now in the bottom of a bronze chest, back in a cave in France.

Andy shook her head, her bangs falling forward and casting her face into shadow. Her hand, perched on her drawn knee, curled and uncurled as rhythmic as a heartbeat.

"I wanted to keep searching. Hiram was our best chance. Joe and Nicky agreed, but I could tell Nicky was bothered and damn it, it bothered me, too."

Andy's voice shook with thinly veiled anger at Nicky.

"No one should be left wondering about family," Andy grated out. "I told Nicky he should go."

Oh. The anger wasn't aimed at Nicky at all.

"Nicky convinced Joe to stay with me. Winter was approaching and the chance of finding Hiram before the cold was crucial. Nicky was going to sail to one of the larger ports closest to Senarica and ask there. He promised he'd keep in contact. He even cut his palm on his sword and swore he'd write in blood if he had to. It made Joe laugh."

Andy wearily smirked. "Carrier pigeons. Lots of ships relied on them by then. There was a trade route established between Senarica and one of the larger islands closest to Bracia. Joe wanted to start using them; said it was a way to ensure we'd always know when to come..." Andy's jaw flexed. "Can't exactly dream out 'send help' and there are fewer guards that you can bribe to drop off a message than you'd think when you're headed for a noose."

"Carrier pigeons?" Nile smiled despite herself. "Was Joe planning on carrying a bird around wherever you guys went?"

Andy snorted. She waved at the sky. "Joe was convinced with training, he could get those things to follow us. Nicky said that if anything, the birds would make a good meal in a pinch."

Andy laughed and her face cleared somewhat. But too quickly, her expression darkened again. 

"I told Nicky to go. It was two days by sea." Andy shook her head. "Told him to find the family, give them some peace. Those damn birds were flying back and forth between those two for a week."

"Carrier pigeons," Nile murmured. "Wow." She smiled to herself. A thought intruded. Nile's smile faded.

"You said the first body."

Andy's hand was a fist again. She thumped it on her bent knee.

"Nicky sent word he'd learned the boy was from up north, from a town called Canzoa. It was a day and a half ride. He promised he'd send word when he returned to the port."

Nile stared at Andy's profile. Her stomach clenched.

Andy's breath drew out sharp between her teeth.

"That day, two more bodies washed up on shore."


	4. Chapter 4

Nile listened, her stomach clenching, as Andy described how Joe had come to Andy after he'd gone to look at the bodies that had tumbled ashore like dead porpoises. Even as he'd been examining them, a third had washed in. All identical. 

Andy grimaced, recalling for Nile how Joe had paced. He should go to Nicolo. He needed to leave. Now.

"He would have gone anyway even if I'd had any thought to say no, which I didn't. There was something wrong. A bad feeling to it all." Andy glowered at the skies. "I should have had those two stick together from the start."

She told Nile how Joe had sent ahead a pigeon with an uncharacteristically messy scrawled message. She'd worried Nicky wouldn't be able to read it. 

_Wait for me_ , Joe's scroll had plead. _I'm coming._

It's okay, Nile repeatedly told herself. Obviously, Joe went. But that didn't stop the horror movie feeling of wanting to know but definitely not wanting to know.

"What happened after that?" Nile asked when Andy took a beat too long to answer. 

Andy's gaze slid over, but the sun was setting and the shadows shaped Andy's face to something inscrutable, something beyond ancient. And then Nile didn't want to ask anymore.

"A storm blew in after Joe left. Biggest they'd seen in decades. Houses were destroyed, a ship from the sea even crashed into a church further inland. It rained dead birds and fish during it all. The place stank for days after." 

Andy's eyes glazed over, her mouth twisting. 

"I thought I'd lost Joe to the sea. I prowled the beaches for a week, checking the wreckage that washed up. But no Joe. I took the first repaired ship after them."

Nile winced. "Didn't think ships were willing to go out after a storm like that."

Andy's teeth clicked in the dark. "Who said they were willing?"

Nile snorted. 

"When I arrived, I rode hard toward the same town Joe and Nicky were supposed to have gone to. I ran into them halfway there. Joe had already found Nicky." Andy twisted her lips and looked out at the view. "We came here for Nicky to recover."

Nile looked about their surroundings. Old, crooked trees rustled in the breeze. A distant bell rang out, signaling the hour. She imagined how quiet it was when there weren't overpriced sweet shops and galleries crammed in every corner. She imagined what it might take to need to recover when you were immortal. She thought of Merrick. Then she stopped thinking for a while and gazed out at a distance. 

Finally, she turned back to Andy and asked, "Did you ever find Hiram?" 

"No." Andy abruptly slid off the rail, ignoring how it made the entire gazebo shake. Nile trailed after Andy, only relaxing when they both went over the safety chain.

Shopping bags rustled when Andy snatched them off the ground. Under any other circumstances, Nile would have taken another photo of Andy in all her black battle splendor, holding lime green and polka dot shop totes with a fist. But the thought of that just made her feel a little ill. Instead, she reached a hand into her back pocket for her phone, to see if Joe or Nicky had sent any texts.   
Nothing.

Nile cleared her throat and asked what she hadn't before. 

"Booker..." Nile watched for Andy's reaction. Andy froze in her tracks and looked over her shoulder, waiting.

"Booker said bigger wounds take longer to heal." 

Andy turned back around. She took a step towards the forgotten path back to town. She stopped again. 

"Yea," Andy grunted. "Physical ones." And once more, she briskly stalked down the path. 

"Come on, we're getting dinner. Ms. Liberté and her black Amex are paying."

Nile stared after Andy. She turned back towards the horizon, back towards where Andy said Bracia lay. She thought about boats, beaches swollen with the dead, and statues with blank eyes staring up at a triumphant figure standing over them.

Throat tight, Nile hurried after Andy.

\-----

The town wasn't as large as even a third of Rome. However, it boasted the same shops one could get lured into and the same sort of places one loved to watch on live streams. 

There were times Nile itched to do the same: squish everyone together to fit within her camera, wrangle enough space to include the scenery and then snap away while hoping no one blinked. 

But such an itch always followed with the urge to send the photo to her friends, to her brother, to her mom.

So, Nile looked away when others around her took them now. Like her new family, she took an extra step to avoid cameras, kept quiet when someone was on the phone, ducked her head a tad lower when people gawked at their surroundings. After all, Copley couldn't catch everything. 

Nile got it. She understood why Andy would make a turn around the wrong corner and pretend to meander like a disgruntled window shopper. 

Nevertheless, Nile thought they were taking an extra-long route today, stopping a beat more at shops no one was interested in. Andy even took time pretending to be confused about the dishes listed on a carry-out menu, even though after minutes of studying, she then ordered food in perfect Italian. She next veered them into the opposite direction to get gelato.

Nile caught Andy checking her phone for what had to be something like the third time. 

The safehouse was a small bungalow huddled under a towering stone warehouse. A barnlike structure, it was once a family vineyard. Joe said on a very hot day, they could smell sticky fermented wine from the left-over barrels next door. The vineyard was given to nature, but the buildings remained, huddled in the shadows of two hills outside of town. They were only visible if someone cared to climb up to one of the many hilltops and looked down.

According to Andy, Booker (and Andy had paused a beat before saying his name out loud) had purchased the buildings, buried the paperwork and the entire property had stood forgotten for fifty-two years. 

Nile could see the smoother surfaces of modern material where bedrooms and bathrooms had been added to the single level clay brick house. Hidden under the warehouse's shadow, its pink coral back was turned towards town, its front faced tall yellowing grass and rows of old trellis posts. 

It was defensible; there wasn't even a road. Andy left their dented brown Saab in the weeds closest to the one highway to town. The only entry was down the slope, around and across the flat and narrow valley to the front door, which was fake. The real door was next to a faux brick chimney that crawled up its south wall. 

Nile followed Andy. She found herself slowing as they approached the rear doorway, even though if she didn't hurry, the food would get cold, and the gelato would melt if they waited much longer. Andy didn't comment, just moved ahead. 

With a deep breath, Nile entered after her. Her eyes tentatively swept the sitting area before tensing as two figures came out of the kitchen in the back.

"About time," Joe quipped. He threw what seemed to be a genuine smile at her and Andy. "Did you get the gelato?"

"Yes. Keep it up," Andy fired back, "and we're going to have to roll you down the hill to here." 

"Aw, but how do I decide which is best if I don't try them?"

"That was your excuse in Paris and Belgium, too? And you never try anything else but pistachio."

Nile blinked, unsure if she should join in. There'd been Amsterdam, as well. 

Suddenly Nile's arms were empty as Joe confiscated the food. He pulled out containers, remarking over each one.

"Didn't know what you guys wanted for dinner," Nile said awkwardly. She shuffled over to the table. "I let Andy order."

"That explains all this meat." Joe ignored Andy's growl as he winked at Nile.

"It's fine," Nicky reassured quietly. Nicky tipped the food into colorful cracked ceramic dishes that Nile had unexpectedly discovered in the house's crawl space above them. 

Nicky had been the one to tell her that first week, after Merrick, that if they were going to be laying low for a few weeks and not squatting in yet another hotel room, then they tried to live like normal. This meant eating from real dishes, washing with full-size bottles of nice smelling soap, and sleeping on real mattresses. 

Here, best of all, they had set up a little diesel generator in the back for electricity and to run the ancient-looking water boiler. She'd heard everyone's laughter when Nile had whooped at realizing there was hot water. 

"You didn't get veal?" Joe exclaimed. 

"Why when I can get it fresh out there?" Andy retorted, gesturing.

"Aw, boss, what did they ever do to you?"

"…they're too fluffy."

"She bought enough for an army!" Nile said but kept sneaking glances over at Nicky as they sorted out the food. He looked nothing like he had at the gallery. He made eye contact with her as he held out spoons for the bowls, added a comment about Andy's opinions on veal, and shook his head at whatever Joe was saying. He seemed okay. But she couldn't stop feeling guilty. And so she kept glancing at him to make certain he really was all right. 

Either Nicky didn't notice or chose to ignore it as he muttered, " _Scusi_ " to Joe, maneuvering past him as he reached for the next container.

Joe murmured to Nicky as he passed. His hand stopping just short of touching Nicky's shoulder and coming down instead on the back of the chair. It was an odd sort of dance, stepping in close, then leaning back with the smallest fidget.

Andy's words rang in Nile's head. 

Joe chuckled low when Nicky made a face.

"Not Italian wedding soup, again?" Nicky sounded aggrieved. 

Andy snorted and reached around Joe to filch a shard of flatbread off his plate as she filled her own. 

Immortals, Nile reminded herself. They can't die, well, not easily, and they heal. They had jokes about soup. Nicky was in front of her, far more animated than the one twisted up in _Il Tormento Del Favorito_. It had happened years ago, centuries, he was alive, tons had happened since then, and currently, he was helping Joe tease Andy about zucchini rolls stuffed with ricotta cheese as he moved past Joe's lifted hand and into the kitchen again.

"...much better at that one place," Joe argued with Andy by the dining table. He gestured to a shell dish Nile wanted to try. "When was that? 04?"

"Let me guess," Nile hollered as she followed Nicky into the kitchen. She began to scoop out forks from a drawer as Nicky pulled a bowl of salad greens from a fridge that had rounded corners and had been new somewhere in the 1950s. Nile looked back toward the doorway, "was that 1804?"

She could practically hear Andy rolling her eyes. "No, 2004."

Nile turned back. Her smirk faded when she spied Nicky rubbing at his neck, his eyes briefly closed.

A lump lodged in Nile's throat and wouldn't go away when she swallowed. 

"Nicky?" Nile asked. 

"Hm?" Nicky opened his eyes and frowned down at the bowl.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Nile leaned closer so only he could hear.

Light eyes flitted to her. And Nile was reminded of the first time she'd met him. She'd assumed Booker was older because Joe and Nicky appeared only slightly older than her. Only to have Nicky speak in words layered with centuries.

That young-old look vanished when Nicky blinked at Nile. He offered her a tiny nod and even smaller smile and pointed to the wine glasses on the open shelves. 

"Please," Nicky murmured as he grabbed a wine Joe had uncorked earlier.

Throat working, Nile balanced as many glasses as she could safely carry along with a fistful of forks and went back to the table. 

\-----

"...no, no, no," Joe said loudly, gesturing wildly with his forkful of eggplant. 

"Montenegro, seventy-two and it was blue! I'm sure of it! Book—I'm telling you, it was blue!"

Nile laughed when she spied Nicky casting his eyes towards the ceiling. 

"Old argument?" Nile asked out of the corner of her mouth. Andy, not to be outdone, spoke louder, insisting it was green.

"Very old," Nicky replied. He smiled faintly. "You'll find disagreements between us gets really old really fast and can outlast empires."

"That's because Andy here can out stubborn even the Sphinx in Egypt," Joe grumbled. He popped the last morsel of food in his mouth before he slung an arm over the top of Nicky's chair. 

"Wait, were you there when it was built?" Nile gaped at Andy.

"If you look at its right paw near the ground, Andy vandalized it with an insult about the pharaoh's cat."

Andy snorted. She tossed a wadded paper napkin at Joe.

Nile narrowed her eyes at Joe. Joe stared back, unblinking.

Nicky betrayed Joe by chuckling.

Joe groaned. "Nicky, my heart, she almost bought it!"

"I taught her better than that," Andy scoffed.

"That and I know my history," Nile fired back. "I did pretty well in school, you know."

Andy shook her head. "Not all history is what you read in books, kid." 

"History is often written by those who have not lived it," Nicky murmured. He cleared his throat and took a sip out of his wine glass.

Andy glanced over to Nicky. Her mouth pressed thin as she turned back to Nile. 

"Better get used to the idea your future might end up as inaccurate history in school."

The thought sat heavily on Nile's chest: like finding familiar faces etched on ancient objects. Nile pushed it aside and focused on the present. It seemed like everyone else was. 

Joe was brandishing a forkful of pasta at Andy, who decided she didn't need a wine glass and declared the bottle was the property of Andromache the Scythian. She drank it with a fist around its neck, muttering vodka would have been better.

"No, no, no," Joe chortled. His hand over the top of Nicky's chair drummed out a tune Nile didn't recognize. "No more planting flags, boss. The last time—"

"Like anyone wanted that piece of rock anyway…"

"Well, Francesco did—"

"Ugh, him and his damn cat…"

Tired of listening to in-jokes she was centuries too late to understand, Nile tapped her fork on the side of her plate to get their attention.

"I got something for you guys," Nile declared. She snorted. "Actually, Ms. Noelle Liberté's black Amex card got something for you all." She pointed to them in general. "If we're seriously doing Copenhagen coming up, we have to look the part."

"There's a look?" Andy smirked, tracking Nile as she went to retrieve the bags she'd left in the living room. 

"I don't think I spent this much in all my life!" Nile continued as she walked sideways between furniture to the bags in one of the armchairs 

"Did you walk by that store?" Joe wanted to know. He leaned back into his chair, arm still on top of Nicky's seat, his fingers still thrumming gently on the back. 

"Twice," Andy confirmed.

"Yup," Nile said, gleefully. Maybe after kicking around a few centuries, she'd be above all that, but right now, it felt damn good. 

"Made sure she got a good look at me and Andy's bags. Got to have my own Pretty Woman moment."

Nile groaned when she turned around to see three blank looks. Well, two, Andy shrugged and speared the last chunk of braised short ribs right off Nile's plate.

"Really, guys?" Nile shook her head. "That movie's old." 

That was just wrong. Nile made a note that introducing movie night had to be a top priority in the near future.

"Well, at least you got your, uh, pretty moment?" Joe said. He raised an eyebrow at the crinkly bag Nile dropped on his lap. He barked out a laugh when Andy pulled out the small sequined clutch from hers. 

"Damn it, Nile," Andy groaned. "You said you weren't going to get the purple one."

"I don't think your ax is going to fit in that thing, Andy." Joe chuckled when he pulled out an olive-brown coppola cap.

"Is this about my cap again?" Joe tried it on. He turned towards Nicky with a smirk. " _Sembra buono_?"

Nicky hid his smile behind his wine glass.

"Thank you, Nile. Maybe I'll wear this to the dinner, yea?"

"You're not going into a ten Gs dinner party wearing any cap," Nile scoffed. 

"Although, I did get everyone driving gloves." She flung one pair at Nicky and another at Joe's head. "Figured it was good for not leaving fingerprints and looking cool. I got Andy and me a set too. Think we could drive some sort of fancy car with the roof down when we arrive."

"Yeah, kid. I'll get Copley right on that." Andy snorted as the pair of supple leather gloves Nile had flung at her fell short, hitting Joe in the face instead. "Your aim needs work."

"C'mon, you know you love to drive him up a wall with weird requests like that." Nile shoved an arm deep into her last sack. Damn it, had she left them on the counter? Nile glared into the bag pushing aside the more normal shirts she'd also bought for herself. Where the hell were they?

"Well, I am asking Copley to get you guys some nice tuxes, so why not a fancy ride?"

"Why do they get to wear suits while you and I wear dresses out of the sixteenth century?" Andy grumbled. "I finally got rid of wearing those stupid corsets of the Medici's and now you're trying to shove me back into one?"

"I'm telling you again, they're not from the sixteenth century, Andy. They're fashion. Like really ridiculously expensive fashion." Nile's fingers brushed against silk. Yes! She snatched at the fabric before it slid away from her.

"Those breeches and hose back then weren't fun either, you know," Joe pointed out. He tilted his head towards Nicky. "Although we did look good in them. I especially liked the jerkins."

"Too cold," Nicky shook his head. He tipped his wine glass towards Andy's purse. "You'll look _au currant_ , boss," he added solemnly.

"C'mon Andy, I'm pretty sure we'll look awesome driving with these," Nile announced as she pulled out matching driving scarves. With a triumphant grin, Nile held them aloft. "Like Grace Kelly."

Joe sat up straight. "Nile, wait—" he began just as Nile flung the ribbon of silk toward Andy and missed, draping it across Nicky instead.

Nicky's wine glass suddenly splintered in his hand.

"Shit!" Nile yelped. Her bags dropped onto the floor even as Joe and Andy leaped to their feet.

Joe yanked the scarf off Nicky's neck. He threw it behind him and dropped to his knees by Nicky. 

Nile found she couldn't move. 

"Let go," Andy ordered as she knelt down next to Nicky's chair. She gripped Nicky's wrist. "Nicky, let go before you heal around it."

Nile recoiled when she realized as the wine glass was crushed, its shattered stem embedded into the fleshy part of Nicky's palm. Red wine—and something else Nile didn't want to think about—dribbled down Nicky's arm and splattered all over his lap.

Too late, Nile's memories conjured up the sash carved delicately on stone flesh, winding around the stretched throat, pooling into loose folds before wrapping around a thigh, an ankle, snaking behind—oh God. 

Nile pressed a fist to her mouth. Nicky blurred before her, but she made out Nicky looking down at himself and not at Andy prying open his bleeding fist to pull the glass out.

"Ah," Nicky said stupidly. 

Joe stared up, his hands hovering, just shy of touching Nicky's knees. Joe didn't appear to notice or care he was kneeling on spilled wine and broken glass.

"Nicky," Joe breathed. " _Per favore. Ritorno._ " He murmured something more, too soft to catch, rolling syllables that only vaguely sounded like Italian.

Nicky tried to flex his right hand, but Andy's fingers remained curled tightly around his wrist.

"You healed around some of the smaller pieces already," Andy said tersely. "We need to pull them out before they push out while you're sleeping."

"I need…" Nicky abruptly stood up. Joe and Andy rose with him. 

Nicky acted like he hadn't heard her. He looked at Joe and did an aborted sway towards him. His hands gestured at himself. "No, I need to be clean."

"Right," Nile fumbled, "The wine." 

Nicky glanced over as if seeing Nile for the first time. He looked down at the wine on his trousers, red that spread up to his torso and down to his knees.

"Yes, sorry, Nile," Nicky said numbly. "The wine."

Joe breathed out unsteadily. "Why don't you go take a shower? They'll pick up out here." At Nicky's hesitation, Joe added, "I'll sit outside. I want to tell you about this book I read. It's terrible."

"Then why tell me about it?" Nicky rasped as he pulled out of Andy's grasp and shuffled towards the door that led to their bedroom and the bathroom inside. 

"So you won't have to read it," Joe replied as his hand hovered over the small of Nicky's back. He didn't push, didn't touch, but Nicky moved like Joe's hand had prodded him. Joe didn't look back at Andy or Nile. His focus was entirely on Nicky. He only paused to close the door gently behind him, letting it fall shut with a quiet click. 

Nile couldn't help but flinch as if it had slammed shut.

After she could hear the water turning on, Nile crouched down and started to pick up the broken glass. 

"I think there's a broom somewhere," Andy muttered. She made no move to get it. She sagged into her chair. Under her breath, she uttered a curse before she folded her arms and let her head drop back.

Nile kept picking up the glass. A few blood-tipped bits were trapped between aging planks of wood and the thick rope weave of a faded blue rug. She used her fingernails to pick them out, not caring if they scratched her.

It was wine Nile smelled the mixed metallic scent. Her nostrils flared. Wine, it was win—she didn't like the conclusions she was drawing. 

"Andy," Nile choked, "tell me I'm wrong. That statue. Nicky. He...he wasn't—"

"I could tell you that," Andy said wearily. Nile felt Andy's eyes boring into the side of her head. "But would that really make you feel better?"

Nile bowed her head. She continued searching for broken glass.

In the bedroom, Joe's voice rose, steady and clear to be heard over the rush of the shower.


	5. Chapter 5

Someone was pacing in the next room. 

There wasn't much in the bedroom Nile shared with Andy. Just two beds on opposite walls, an old wooden crate in the middle with more books stacked on top. 

One bed was newer than the others. Andy was outvoted about sleeping in an armchair as usual. She'd only relented after Copley had helped Nile set up a remote security system that would ping all their phones if any of the double set of perimeters, one near one further out, were breached. 

Nile's bed was the one against the wall the bungalow's two bedrooms shared. Andy was on the opposite bed, once again sleeping sitting up, legs crossed and her head tipped towards the door. She slept with her eyes half-closed. 

Andy had slept like that for centuries, Nicky had once said. He'd laughed when Nile had confessed it freaked her out. Was she sleeping? Was she watching? What the hell was up with that? 

Joe had added, in a stage whisper, it freaked Nicky out, too. Only his dear Nicolo was much too polite to say it. Andy replied by way of a very cold, very damp towel landing on Joe's lap.

Nile stared at Andy's sleeping (maybe) pose across from her. The wall against her back hummed with vibrations of heavy footsteps. 

Pressed against a pillow, Nile's stomach gurgled. Her appetite came back. 

Dinner had been packed away when it looked like Joe and Nicky weren't coming back out. Without discussing it, she and Andy had transferred the food back into their original containers to store in the fridge. 

They were all a bit twitchy about wasting food, Nile, because her mother had had to make ends meet after her father had died. But with Joe and Nicky, there had been muttered reminders about plagues and wars and too many weeks starving wandering across deserts. And Andy always added like it was a grim punchline, "hardtack." 

Apparently, there was a story somewhere in there about a two-month trek involving nothing but hardtack. 

Joe had shuffled out at one point while Andy was scraping some of the eggplant back into its container. He shook his head when Nile had offered to make up two plates. Instead, he'd scooped up a small bowl of risotto and stuck two spoons into the mound. Andy had muttered darkly under her breath before she'd shoved one of the complimentary dinner rolls into the pocket of Joe's hoodie as well. 

The door had been left open a crack when Joe had emerged. It allowed Nile to spot Nicky, his head hidden under the folds of a towel, seated on the bed. Nicky's head lifted a fraction at Joe's whispered, "I'm back." But Nicky had said nothing in return. Nile had watched as Joe'd folded himself down to sit in front of Nicky on the floor and then the door had swung shut with a careful kick of Joe's foot.

Nile hadn't seen them since.

In bed, Nile now listened to one of them pace back and forth, century-old wood groaning softly under someone's feet. There was murmuring, too low to be discernible through the wall. 

But it was only one set of footsteps. And only one voice. Nile couldn't tell if they both belonged to the same person.

Nile exhaled, giving up on going to sleep. Every time Nile closed her eyes, she saw that damn statue, those blank eyes, the sash coiled possessively—

A thump next door broke through Nile's thoughts. A distressed cry, another murmuring and then it became quiet. She sat up, but Andy was already at the door, opening it just as Joe raised a hand to knock. He'd never bothered to knock before. He and Nicky usually banged code on the doors and walls. 

Good practice, they had said the first time they rattled Nile's door. 

Assholes, Andy had fired back. No one wanted to hear Joe gleefully rap out in Morse code that Nicky made him tea and toast at five o'clock in the morning.

"Andy..." Joe exhaled. The light they'd left on in the living room cast a long shadow over him. Joe's hands lifted, dropped, lifted again as if he wasn't sure what to do with them.

"Want me over there?" Andy sounded unsurprised, already bending at the waist to retrieve a battered leatherbound book out of her pack on the floor. It was small enough to fit within the curl of her grasp.

"Please." Joe stepped aside. Andy patted him on the shoulder as she passed. She glanced behind her, at Nile, nodding once and left with Joe.

More footsteps. Nile heard a door creak open then close. Voices. Two now. There was more pacing again.

Nile dropped back into bed. She stared at the ceiling. She was torn from trying to hear what they were saying and feeling she didn't have the right to know. 

The floor in the next room creaked once more. Something groaned. She wasn't sure if it was the wall or the floorboards again. Her stomach roiled at the thought that maybe it was neither.

Nile sat up. After a few minutes, after her ears started to burn at each sound, Nile snatched a sweatshirt crumpled by the foot of the bed. Shivering, Nile shuffled out the door.

\-----

All she could find was his name.

Nile tapped a few more keys, tried a few misspellings, dropped the 'de' but aside from a three-sentence mention on Wikipedia: nothing. 

Staring at her laptop screen, Nile reluctantly opened the folder she'd been avoiding.

Nile's photos from her phone filled the screen, square thumbnail tiles covering every pixel available on her display. She cringed; she hadn't realized she'd taken so many.

Behind Nile, the murmuring never stopped. Sometimes it was one voice. Sometimes it was two. Never three. She wished it was three. She wished she could get up from the chair, walk over and knock on the door and...and what? Instead, she headed to the kitchen and poked listlessly in the fridge. The cold air blew across her face as she stared blindly at the shelves. Eventually, she sighed and reached in for the first box on the shelf. 

Walking back toward her laptop, Nile speared a dumpling thing and poked it in her mouth. She chewed mechanically. She'd thought it was gnocchi, but it tasted different from what she'd remembered Olive Garden serving. She had a sudden longing for her mom and her brother and the crappy not-very Italian Olive Garden her mom had used to take them to on special occasions. Her chest felt tight. 

Forcing herself to swallow, Nile chomped on the cold not-Olive Garden-gnocchi as she toggled through the photos, determinedly looking past the statue's figures for a clear shot of the display placards that bookended the pillar. She'd already spotted the name Biffoli on the fourth image and had just expanded thumbnails to find another angle when the door creaked open.

Nile spun around in her seat. Joe slipped out the door. Beyond him, she could just see the fine-boned structure of Andy's profile, her lips barely moving as she read from the book she'd grabbed. She was on the floor, a hand on the bed, not quite touching the bony ankle by her shoulder. 

Nicky sat on the bed with his back against the wall. A towel was still draped over his head and shoulders like he had forgotten it hours ago when he'd come out of the shower and simply left it there like a cowl. He appeared oddly meditative, his head leaned back, resting against the plaster, face angled away from Andy. But it was the tension in his shoulders that hinted that he was aware of Andy and her hand. 

Joe shut the door, blocking them from view. He seemed to take great care not to let it slam, resting his palm briefly against the wood. 

"Hey," Nile whispered. She couldn't squeeze anything else out from her constricted throat. "You okay?"

Joe smiled wearily. "I'm taking a break," And Nile could hear Andy in those words. 

He lifted his hands, palms up. He frowned at them as if he'd never seen them before, then dropping them to his sides with a sigh. 

"It is...my hands...Andy's are...not so...." Joe shrugged. 

Nile thought about the faceless man in the statue's tableau, his massive hand cupping the entire back of Nicky—no, of the figure's head, masculine fingers twisted like talons, visibly dug through the thick hair that curtained half the figure's face.

"Nicky wouldn't think that," Nile whispered, but remembered now aborted touches at dinner, Joe reaching, but not connecting. Hand hovering over Nicky's shoulder before falling to rest lightly on the back of a chair. She lowered her eyes. The food sat in her gut like a lump.

Joe eased into a seat diagonally across from Nile and faced the door. His eyes lingered there a beat before sliding over to Nile.

"We live for a long time. Sometimes our bodies remember things our brains have forgotten," Joe shrugged. The lines around his eyes deepened. "We are not taking chances. We don't want that _mostro_ back in our lives more than his memories already are."

Joe's voice thinned. He flicked another look to the door. He breathed out and sagged back in the chair.

"There's not going to be much about him on Google." Joe nodded towards Nile's computer. 

Nile's shoulders hunched forward. She should have used her phone.

"No." Nile grimaced, swinging the laptop partially around. "I took some photos. I…I was going to delete them."

Joe studied Nile's screen from his angle. 

"Can you enlarge that one?" Joe asked quietly. "Fourth one in on the second row."

Nile fidgeted. "I should just—"

"Please."

Throat working, Nile selected the one Joe had indicated, pulling it up to the full screen. She cringed. The image of Nicky's face turned away from Biffoli was all too sharp, all too clear. She remembered squeaking, goddamn squeaking, when she'd had a better look before rapidly taking as many shots she could before she had to meet up with Andy last night. When Andy said 1900, she meant 1900 or else.

Nile was tempted to leave it at an angle so Joe couldn't see it in full clarity. But Joe reached over and nudged the laptop with a finger until it faced him fully.

Silently, Joe stared at the photo. His expression was carefully neutral. Nile wondered if Joe even saw the photo at all.

"Ah, Nicolo." Joe traced the shape of the figure's jaw, the side the large hand didn't conceal. When he pulled his finger away, a smudge marred the image.

"We were in Madrid." Joe cleaned the screen with an edge of his sleeve. As he did, he accidentally activated the touchscreen. The image shrank back into a thumbnail.

"About forty, no, fifty years after we found Booker." Joe made a face; time spans were harder sometimes to bring to mind when you were an immortal. "We needed to be there for several weeks. Booker and Nicky returned from meeting a man for some official papers."

Joe grimaced.

"Something happened. They never said what, but Booker was cursing in French the rest of the day and insisted he would forge the documents himself." Joe smiled. Sort of. "Took him three days, but they were convincing."

Nile nodded. Copley had given Nile her cover ids. Andy glanced at one and muttered, "ah hell, Booker," sadly. Joe and Nicky weren't mentioning Booker much by name yet, only referring to Booker as "him" it still being an open wound, so Nile hadn't pursued it.

"That night," Joe murmured, his eyes drifting back to the shut door. "Nicky woke me up in—I'm not sure what time it was, but it wasn't our turn to stand watch yet."

Joe extended out his hand. He curled it into a fist.

"He was holding something in his hand. He asked me to cut his hair."

Joe scratched his beard. His eyes crinkled in memory.

"Nicky used to wear his hair longer, you know. Not as long as Andy, but it used to capture the sunlight." Joe waved a hand over his scalp. "I once told him it's because the sun was greedy. It adored him almost as much as I did and stayed in his hair so that it could be close to him."

Nile's mouth twisted, smiling, but not quite, not with Joe looking so regretful. "Nicky once said you were meant to be a poet."

Joe scoffed, but then he sobered. 

"He opened his hand," Joe said, his voice stumbling a bit. He opened his palm and breathed out shakily. "It was a clump of his hair."

Nile swallowed. "Oh."

"It had already healed by the time he woke me." Joe glanced over to the door again. He wiped a hand across his mouth. 

"I did the best I could with what was around. The next morning, Nicky came downstairs. Andy said nothing. Booker complained I did a terrible job."

Joe gave an aborted laugh. He indicated to his own head, gestured to the door.

"Next day, Andy showed up with her braid sawed off." Joe chuckled softly. The look he gave the door this time was fond. "Said it was starting to get impractical."

Nile remembered an old sepia-tone photo on Copley's board. Andy and the others were in Union blues, the tall female warrior standing behind her men, her cropped hair sticking out from under a forage cap. 

"Did Nicky ever say why?"

Joe shook his head. "Like I said, sometimes our brain forgets, but our body remembers. But after that, I was the only one who cut his hair." He scowled at Nile's computer. "I think I know why now."

Joe looked like he wanted to run his scimitar through the computer. But he then looked at the door. His anger seeped away.

Andy's voice filtered out, soft and melodious. 

"Is that Arabic?" Nile found herself relaxing under the lullaby of Andy's voice.

"Some poems I wrote," Joe said, his eyes bright as he considered the door. "I wrote a few when we first came here. Andy asked me to make her a copy when we left."

"Wow," Nile joked lightly. "Artist and a poet."

Joe snorted quietly. He stared at the door, his brown eyes unreadable.

Andy's words, barely discernible, floated out unwavering.

"Nicky likes them," Joe murmured. He closed his eyes, his mouth twisting. "So, I wrote them." 

Nile ached at the lines etched deep in Joe's downturned mouth. "Andy said you got him out."

Joe's lips thinned into a grim smile. His eyes gleamed with a dark pride.

"Actually, Nicky got himself out."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rest assured, this fic is done. Sadly, you have a tech-ninny here and formatting takes me forever. I'll do my best to get two formatted and checked over to post each day. I am aiming to have this all posted by this Wednesday, if not sooner.
> 
> Now...where is that darn edit button? LOL


	6. Chapter 6

"The skies were darkening when I set sail." Joe sat back in his chair, arms folded as he remembered. 

"The crew grumbled about it. When it started to rain, they wanted their captain to turn back."

Nile made a face. "Andy mentioned it was pretty bad. She thought for sure you were lost at sea."

"I wouldn't have let the waters take me," Joe said, his voice hard. His nostrils briefly flared as he sharply exhaled. 

"Fortunately, greed overrides many men's fears." Joe idly turned the rings on his fingers, the silver glint catching the ceiling light. "I gave the captain every coin I had, gave up my rings, anything of value so long as he continued."

Joe smiled when he caught Nile's curious glance at his hands. "These? Nicky tracked them down a few decades ago. They were at a museum in Cairo. Book..." Joe breathed deeply before he continued, "Booker made copies for a swap. Nicky insisted we break in to get them back."

Joe turned his hand, examining the wide bands. 

"Like that statue's placard. The information card on these was wrong. These were no dowry gift made for a sultan's daughter, nor were they given up for ransom." Joe choked out a laugh. 

"Booker was goading Nicky to correct the board. But then Andy came and retrieved us. She wasn't happy with the 'out for a walk' note we'd left in the safehouse."

"I'll bet." Nile has the image of Andy 'retrieving' her younger immortals, maybe by the ears. There were three of them, but Nile was sure Andy could have done it.

Joe smirked. "It was exactly how you imagined." 

"So, you made it through the storm," Nile prodded.

"It still took me three days," Joe said, sobering. "One day more than it should have, three days too much."

Joe shook his head. "I should have been with him. Andy could have told Nicky to wait. We would have sought out the boy's people together. But each day, we searched for Jasper; I could see that fate of the boy weighed on Nicky as if he drew a sword on that poor soul himself."

The door creaked. Joe's eyes snapped over, but no one emerged. "We all discussed it. It wasn't just Nicky's decision. I was just as wrong as he." And Nile could tell he wasn't only talking to her just then. 

"The port was destroyed. It wasn't clear if Nicky ever got my message, but I knew in my heart, Nicky had already gone North. That's where I needed to be."

"I had no more money. It seemed reasonable to obtain a horse another way." Joe pressed a thumb into his left shoulder, idly massaging a spot. 

"They tried to stop me."

Nile, her eyes wide, could only nod.

"I tied myself to the horse so if I died, I'd still have the beast after I revived." Joe clenched a fist, gripping invisible reins. 

"I nearly rode the poor creature to death, but it got me there only a day later. I searched the town. No one would talk to me." 

Joe gestured towards himself. 

"Blood on my clothes, my cloak shredded from the storm. I looked like the winds had picked me up and tumbled me down the mountain they were under."

"How did you find Nicky then?" Nile hushed.

Joe's eyes shadowed. "I didn't, not at first. I searched all over the town for our signal."

"A signal?" Nile's brow furrowed. Andy had begun showing her a number of markings her new family liked to use, text messaging only having been a recent invention.

"The one we leave to show where we've sought shelter should we get separated or forced to arrive in a town ahead of each other."

Joe pressed the back of his hand to his mouth to dam the chuckle wanting to break free.

"His Arabic was still terrible back then. I had taught him for years. He tried so hard. He speaks it better now, though his writing." Joe shook his head, "even today. He normally has such beautiful handwriting, but that?"

With a soft scoff, Joe drew lines in the air with a finger. "We made something long ago, not something a casual eye would understand, no matter the language used in the current town. A message just for us. The sun with a crescent moon within. That was our sign should we ever need to find each other. He knew I would look for it."

Joe tipped his head back, staring at the ceiling like it held all his secrets.

"Nicky had carved it on the bottom of a wall, along the pathway to where he was staying, but the innkeeper was useless." Joe scowled. 

"He remembered Nicky was a 'polite man' but never paid attention. He didn't recall if Nicky had left that morning or never had not come back the night before. Or he wouldn't tell me because I didn't have the coin."

Nile made a face for Joe's sake. Joe's voice held a thread of frustration she understood from months of knocking on doors, trying to gather intel from stony faces.

Joe rubbed his chin wearily. He exhaled. 

"I broke into Nicky's room and looked around. I'd hoped he'd only stepped out and would still return."

Joe closed his eyes again as if remembering.

"But then I found the sketches." 

"Sketches?" Nile checked her laptop screen. She had two photos of the weathered sketchbook that had been found with the statues. But none of any pages. 

"They were torn off from a notebook, or he found them or..." Joe curled his fingers into his beard and tugged. He shook his head.

"When I saw them, I knew Nicky wouldn't be back. He didn't wait. He went out there alone..."

With a growl, Joe shot up to his feet. He stalked into the kitchen area, wrenched the taps on and filled a glass. He lifted it to his mouth and took a heavy drink.

"What was in the sketches?" Nile tracked Joe. "Joe?"

"Every one of them were the same. No," Joe shook his head, lowering the glass. "Not of one person, but all the same eyes, same mouth. All the same."

"Biffoli had a type," Nile murmured. Inwardly, she cringed. Somehow it felt wrong to attach modern terminology to it. "Sorry. I meant..."

Joe made a sound, like a laugh, like a sob. "Back then, we didn't have words to explain why men do such deeds. When I saw those sketches and who they looked like, I knew why Nicky didn't wait for me, why he felt he had to act and was taken."

Nile's throat worked. "They all looked like Nicky?"

Joe's eyes glinted suspiciously bright.

"No. They all looked like me."


	7. Chapter 7

Nile swallowed, over and over, her eyes tracking Joe as he paced. He never wandered too far from the door to his room. 

Abruptly, Joe stopped behind Nile. He stared down at her laptop.

"How many did they find?"

"Only one." Nile enlarged one of the pictures of the sketchbook. 

"The plaque said the contents were drafts for his final set of sculptures. It's why there were theories his work wasn't theological but..." Nile blinked rapidly. The sketchbook blurred on the screen.

"Many like to number their books," Joe said, his voice was unnaturally calm. "I'm up to three thousand and ninety-three. What volume number is that one?"

"There's no mention how many are still—"

"Nile."

"Volume nine." Nile's throat worked. She didn't add there was a reward out for the discovery of others.

"Is volume nine open to the public?" If only Joe sounded upset or sad, not toneless. Nile thought he sounded unsurprised, and that made it worse.

"No." Nile shook her head. "They said due to the nature of the drawings, the municipal government only permitted them to show the cover." She glanced up at Joe's shuttered expression.

"No," Nile whispered. "No one out there got a look inside." 

"Every sketch Nicky found could have been me. He saw those and felt he must stop whoever was doing this. Nine. It is why he could not wait...ah Nicolo." Joe exhaled. He turned away from the laptop. 

Joe settled his palms on the door, made like he was going to forcefully push it open. But after a pause, Joe rested his forehead against the wood between his hands. His lips moved, silently like in prayer. He stopped with a sigh.

With effort, Joe shoved off from the door. He returned to his seat and resumed sentry mode.

"Six days. I didn't find him until six days later." Joe scrubbed his palms down his face. "And it was by luck. Biffoli promised one of his statues as payment to a local merchant and sent over a sketch of the piece. I heard a rumor about it and went to see..."

Joe rubbed a hand over his throat. "It was Nicky. The bastard drew Nicky and him and he was..."

Joe lifted a fist. Nile tensed, but at the last moment, Joe's eyes flicked to the door.

His fist lowered. It opened into a loose hand that he set very carefully on the table.

"I hunted down the artist and found him delirious in his bedroom with a festering wound in his belly."

Joe smiled grimly, that dark gleam of pride again in his eyes. His hand on the table flexed, fingers digging into the wood.

"Nicky did that. Took whatever was at hand and struck down the _mostro_ like the beast he was."

Joe held up his hands, miming holding a mallet and a pike.

"'It was the same chisel he used later to break free of his shackles."

There was a hot swell of pride that curled up in Nile's chest warring with the horror that kept squeezing her heart. 

"I followed the blood across the tiles and up to the bedroom," Joe murmured, his gaze looked past Nile's ear. "Biffoli must have dragged himself up the stairs. His home was a place of wealth but empty of family or servants. He lost them, all of them to a plague. Just stone statues everywhere kept him company."

Nile looked at the screen, the rows and rows of faces and bodies frozen in time. 

"It's like living with ghosts," Nile said, unable to help herself.

Joe grunted. "He babbled about finding his immortality, his gift. When he saw me, he called me an angel. He asked if I was here to grant him his gift, the one his favorite refused to give him no matter how hard he asked."

Nile tensed.

"Nicky and immortality?"

Joe nodded jerkily.

"His fav—" Joe muttered something biting under his breath, the syllables too harsh, too angry for Nile to discern the language. "I don't know how long Biffoli lay in his bed. But it was long enough that no healer could have helped. I tried to get him to tell me where Nicky was, if there were others. He only babbled about the statues and heaven rewarding him for punishing those who wronged Bernini, his mentor, with eternal life ..."

Joe looked grim. 

"Did you..." Nile swallowed. "Did you kill him?"

Joe's hand on the table twitched as if wrapping itself around the grip of his scimitar.

Joe said, at last, his voice thick and weary. "He was beyond my reach. Heard no one but the God he'd shaped in his own poisoned mind. I looked, but there were no answers there. I left him where he lay."

"It was mercy," Nile said. 

Joe nodded. His mouth pressed thin.

"When I found Nicky, I wished I wasn't so merciful."

\-----

Joe stared hard at Nile, his eyes daring her to disagree. Nile hoped her shock wasn't visible on her face. 

"This is a nice place, yea?" Joe said after a long moment. He clasped his hands together on the table. He looked around, critically examining the faded tan walls and yellow trim. "When we first came here, it was a thriving vineyard. Horses roamed the next hill over. Andy liked that."

Nile paused at the abrupt topic shift, unsure if she was expected to answer. She surveyed the walls in desperate need of paint. There were surprisingly modern touches here and there: an electric wall sconce and the old refrigerator.

"I brought Nicky here," Joe said quietly, "after I found him." He sighed heavily. 

"Biffoli was doing this for years. He had a hidden passage that led to a cellar where he kept his studio and victims." Joe shook his head. "I looked but didn't see it at first, but then I saw our sign."

"The one you and Nicky made," Nile remembered.

"I don't know how he was able to mark the passage. Maybe he did it before he was caught."

Joe drew on the table with a finger, his brown eyes distant, reading something only he could see.

"By the time I figured out how to enter the passageway, Nicky had already freed himself and dragged himself across the cellar to the other cages."

At Nile's look, Joe grimaced.

"The artist's chisel was the only thing he had. It was not strong enough to break metal shackles off..." Joe trailed off.

But strong enough to break bone to slide through. Under the table, Nile's feet flexed.

Joe kept writing invisible symbols on the table with a finger.

"He didn't know me," Joe murmured. He grimaced when he heard himself. "No, I mean to say he was confused. They'd been left down there so long; no food, no water. He was weak and exhausted; he had died many times, but fought so hard. Nicky..." 

Joe's hands spread wide on the table. He breathed in. He breathed out. 

"He tried to free the others. But he couldn't."

Joe looked over at the door with an ache Nile felt in her own gut. He shook his head. 

"The moment I touched him, he attacked. That chisel in his hand almost took out my eye." Joe sounded tremulous but also proud, his eyes glittering. "He fought until his heart gave out."

"He remembered me after he revived." Joe scrubbed a hand across his mouth and beard. "I cleaned him. I wrapped him in my cloak. "

"What about the others?" Nile asked hesitantly. 

Joe's eyes shadowed. He shook his head.

"Their cages were embedded into rock. Only one side was accessible, and that only with the key Biffoli carried. When I found Nicky, even after I revived him, he kept trying to reach through the bars of the most recent one. Shouting help will be there soon. You see, he'd promised help would come. "

"Was the last one, I mean, did he..."

Joe shook his head.

"The boy was dead. I pulled him out. Nicky insisted he'd heard the boy crying, but the body was cold. He'd already departed this life before Nicky broke himself free to go to him. I don't know how many times Nicky himself died down there...only to wake with another one put in the cage next to his. It was the devil's dance."

Joe didn't finish. He folded his arms in front of him, his chin to his chest as he exhaled between his teeth.

"I waited for Nicky to give all of them last rites. I found his sword, some clothing and we rode out of the town."

Joe pointed to something behind Nile. "And there was Andromache the Scythian charging up the road." His smile was brittle. "She took one look at Nicky and told us to wait for her in the next town over. Here. She would take care of the rest."

Nile paused, her mind piecing everything together.

"The gallery said academics think Biffoli was killed in a robbery and..."

Joe smiled tersely. "Andy destroyed every statue and sketch she could find. I didn't have much time to help. I needed to get Nicky away. Too many people knew I'd been searching and had gone there. There was no way to move that many bodies without anyone noticing, not even back then. She placed each body around the home where they could be discovered and given a proper burial."

"But the records said they were lovers…" Nile frowned. She didn't think Andy would have staged something like that.

Joe looked pinched. "Biffoli had a lot of wealthy and powerful patrons. I suspect a lot of them shared the same wicked desires. It was easier to say the bodies were lovers than victims of a demonic man they'd supported." 

Joe grimaced at Nile.

"This century wasn't the one that invented conspiracies, Nile."

Nile's eyes slid away and landed on the ratty couch by the living area. The stack of books holding up the TV comforted her. Beyond the walls, a distant sheep bawled. The windows showed an inky night sky with faraway stars. 

"This is a nice place," Nile murmured. "How long did you stay here?"

Joe smiled to himself. "Almost three years." He glanced around him. "The family who lived here needed a caretaker. We needed a place close by."

"Close by?" Nile thought they would have wanted an ocean between them and Biffoli.

Joe's expression shadowed. "So Andy could go back to Bracia to search for Jasper and for us to wait."

"Wait for what?"

"Biffoli preyed on young men, promised fortunes if they would pose for him. These souls were probably poor and desperate, enough to blind one to the possibility of anything sinister." 

"There was no mention of names," Nile hedged. "Of the victims."

Joe exhaled. "We couldn't find any names. We tried, but eighteenth-century…" He lifted his shoulders, briefly. "Nicky…he didn't remember much. Pieces that kept him up at night, but not enough to find names. We accepted that. Eventually. But those cursed statues..."

"Number fifty-three," Nile blurted. "They found nine, but there was more out there. You were waiting for more to surface."

"Whether they have Nicky's face or not," Joe rumbled, "They all bore Biffoli's name; an artist's way to immortality. I promised to find them."

"There wasn't much about Biffoli," Nile realized. "No examples of his works until a few years ago."

"Biffoli must have kept a few pieces for himself." Joe's growl deepened. "Hidden his favorites. Pieces of his victims. Pieces of Nicky taken without my heart's permission. I swore I would track all of them down, every last piece, and wipe Biffoli from history."

Nile opened her mouth. She closed it. She studied Joe's face, the shadows that shrouded the eyes which often easily crinkled up in mirth.

Right now, there was no cheer in the gaze and Joe's smile held no joy.

"That monster died too soon," Joe said, low. "But there was more than one way to kill a man."

The hair in the back of Nile's neck rose. Nile swallowed. And nodded.


	8. Chapter 8

The laptop snapped shut just as the door cracked open. Joe jumped to his feet. Nile ached at the hopeful look on his face. 

Andy slipped out, stepping through sideways. She checked Nile, her mouth pursing at whatever she saw. Her eyes slid over to Joe. 

"Complained I wasn't reading your book right." Andy's lips curled up at a corner. She held up the battered volume. 

Joe huffed, mirroring Andy's restrained smile.

"That's because you never do." Joe approached Andy, accepting the tattered book with both hands. "It's poetry, not tactical commands. The last time, Booker said you read it like a list of orders."

Andy rolled her eyes. She dropped a hand on Joe's shoulder and her expression softened.

"Did you eat?"

Joe, his eyes on the book as he turned the pages, shrugged.

"We both eat or we both don't, you know that," Joe muttered, missing Andy's head shake. She clapped Joe's shoulder once.

"You're eating breakfast. Both of you." Andy's voice brooked no argument.

Joe looked up, his smile lopsided. "Only if you're not cooking, boss."

Andy growled with no heat in it. She settled the flat of her palm on Joe's shoulder blade. 

"Thanks, Andy," Joe murmured.

"Always." Andy's hand dropped as Joe lightly knocked.

Nicky was still sitting on the bed, the towel on his lap. He tilted his head up in silent greeting when Joe stepped in. 

Joe murmured something soft and rolling in a dialect Nile suspected no longer existed. He held the book in one hand, the other hovering between them, asking for permission. 

After some hesitation, Nicky reached out. He curled a loose hand around Joe's wrist. Joe drew closer as if pulled in. 

"Nicolo," Joe breathed, as he sat down on the edge of the bed.

Nicky breathed out slowly, still silent, as he rested his forehead against Joe's. 

Andy pulled the door shut behind her.

"You should get some sleep," Andy said, not unkindly. She grimaced when Nile flicked a worried look to the door behind Andy.

"They'll be fine." Andy sighed, her lips crooked into a bitter twist. "They always will be." 

"Andy, shouldn't we—" Nile rubbed her palm over her laptop uncertainly.

She studied Nile, her eyes ancient and dark. "What should _we_ be doing, Nile?"

Nile opened her mouth again. To explain, to ask, she wasn't sure what wanted to spill out first.

Andy shook her head.

"Nile, there are things I can tell you and things you need to figure out for yourself. I don't have all the answers." Andy glanced over at a chair that no one had sat in during dinner. A chair left open.

"Andy. I…" Nile screwed up her face. "I want to do the right thing."

"That's all any of us wants. It'll be okay, Nile. Get some sleep," Andy repeated heavily. She slid into the seat Joe had vacated. She didn't face the door. In fact, she deliberately turned her shoulder away from it.

"I'll take this watch," Andy said.

Except they had all agreed they weren't taking watches. They had all agreed Copley and Nile's security measures were enough to give them a warning. 

Andy sat in the chair, slumped forward rather than back like she normally did. She folded her hands in front of her and stared at her double fists, her head canted fractionally towards the bedroom. Nile recognized this, after returning from patrol and back on base. When rest was ordered. Sergeants sitting back, arms crossed as they rested on empty ammo bins, eyes meditating on hospital tents and their wounded. Waiting, just in case. 

Nile dropped her eyes.

"Night, Andy," Nile conceded. She slipped into their bedroom. If Andy made any reply, Nile didn't hear it as she curled back into her bed. She listened. Only one voice again. Most likely Joe's, reading quietly on. 

Nile turned her face into the thin pillow and pressed her hot eyes into it.

\-----

The rest of the night alternated from Nile jerking awake at the floors creaking next door to the soft rhythm of a voice or dreams of white statues writhing, their feet hammered into rock, their mouths screaming without a sound.

Nile gave up going back to sleep when sallow daylight seeped into the room from the lone window. She checked through a crack in the door. 

Andy wasn't at her post. She'd left a leather gauntlet on the table, her version of "be right back" because she loathed post-its and their ridiculous inability to stay on their intended spot. It indicated she was out jogging, ax swinging, whatever warrior immortals (former) do for exercise. Planks? Yoga? Her mind couldn't help inserting Xena's battle cry in her mind. That show had been her mom's favorite. 

The usual pang Nile got around any memory of her family was dulled by the churning in her stomach. There were no sounds from the bedroom next door now. She hoped it meant they were sleeping. 

Nile shuffled quietly out to the kitchen. She noted the two mugs, the bowl and the two spoons carefully stacked up in the sink, waiting to be washed. 

There weren't normally dishes in the sink; Nicky was always quick to wash them. Or Joe. They were surprisingly a pair of neat freaks when staying in one spot for anything longer than a day. When commented on, Joe blithely remarked something about rats and the plague. Nicky only made a face in agreement.

Suddenly Nile felt useless, stumbling behind language translations, out of sync when one of them mentioned something antiquated and the others would laugh. They tried to include Nile in, and most of the time, they succeeded. But now, she felt like a kid unexpectedly hanging around and more in the way than not. 

She had unintentionally struck a wound, one Andy or Joe or even Booker would not have ever made. It felt worse than accidentally wearing one of Booker's old shirts from a safe house.

Nile glanced at the shut bedroom door. But she wasn't a kid. She briefly touched the butter-soft leather band on the table. She was a full-fledged member of this family now. And then she nodded, her decision made.


	9. Chapter 9

"Ms. Liberté, nice to see you again."

It was gone. 

Nile turned her eyes with some effort towards Devon. Devon's suit was dove grey today. Nile opened her mouth, snapped it shut, took a deep breath and tried again.

"I thought the showing was on for the rest of the week before the auction." Nile was glad how calm she sounded. Her insides were screaming.

Devon glanced around, lingering on the pillar where a hammered bronze vase now stood. No spotlights or extra CCTV cameras were needed.

"Ah," Devon said, "Your _il tormento del favorito_ piece." 

Devon smiled, looking so proud she remembered. Nile wanted to punch her perfect teeth in. 

"It took us all by surprise, but someone stepped forward and offered far more than our estimators evaluated the pieces to be worth." Devon appeared pleased, most likely happy with her commission. 

"Even bought the rights for the gallery book." Devon surveyed the space with a tinge of regret. "They asked to come in this morning to pack up everything. Since they paid double its estimated worth, it was an easy request. We opened up at dawn for the movers. They even helped us remove all the banners and material about the showing and set up our next showing."

"So, all of it?" Nile managed. "They took all of it? Who?"

Devon smiled politely. "I'm afraid we can't divulge that, Ms. Liberté." She leaned in, her voice dropping. 

"However, I wouldn't be surprised if you see them again in a much larger exhibit, maybe even on a documentary soon."

Nile swallowed. "Wha—I mean...cool."

"We have some fascinating new pieces out today," Devon offered. "Feel free to look around. You may find something else that catches your interest."

Devon's comment was innocuous. Nevertheless, her words rang sharp like an accusation.

Nile smiled as best she could, turning away as if that damn bronze vase thing—was that really the asking price, well, shit—was actually going to hold her interest. Devon walked away with a click of heels, briskly greeting in German another visitor by name.

A lump sat on Nile's chest as she scanned the gallery. 

Everything was gone. Including the sketchbook Nile had assured Joe no one outside of the restoration people had yet seen inside. The gallery was rearranged, new banners up. It was like it had never happened.

Nile made another visual sweep, hoping against hope something was left behind that she could buy and wreck into a million pieces, maybe help Nicky set on fire. Or not. She hadn't thought past stomping into town with Ms. Liberté's black Amex card and stopping the unknowing horror show.

Halfway through her survey, something caught the corner of her eye. Casually, Nile retreated a step, backing into a darker spot between two CCTVs. She glanced over to her eleven o'clock, across the room.

Staring fascinated—or appearing to be—at the pair of long daggers Andy had studied so assiduously yesterday, a man stood with his slouched back to a pillar. The hooded sweatshirt looked new; its charcoal gray fabric was still vivid. A tingling teased the back of her head.

"Nicky," Nile whispered.

Light-colored eyes underlined with shadows glanced up and locked with Nile. After a beat, Nicky nodded.

\-----

Nile followed Nicky out through the other entrance—double doors, separate battery-powered locks—and down the street. She trailed behind him, a knot in her throat, her eyes on the broad shoulders.

At the corner, Nicky stopped. He pulled down his hood and glanced over his shoulder at Nile. A dark eyebrow lifted in question. He tipped his head. He waited.

Nile crossed the rest of the distance in a few hurried steps. Something inside her unclenched when she joined him. She didn't touch Nicky but let his stiff sweatshirted arm brush against her as they left the gallery behind.

\-----

It was embarrassing how long it took before Nile realized where they were going. She let him lead the way in both direction and conversation. He walked as if he had all the time in the world. Nile knew her quick half march, full stride amused the others. She was originally from Chicago. She had urgency permeated in her bones. She couldn't help feeling the need to rush. 

Andy scoffed it was more a generational thing. Nicky mused it was from drinking all the badly brewed coffee out there. Which was an odd thing to say because Nile never saw him with anything but tea. Joe beamed at Nile in an oddly proud way when she had remarked on it.

Nile must have made a sound when she avoided the same broken paving stone. Nicky paused in his imitation of a mountain goat and turned around.

"Gazebo, right?" Nile panted as she caught up to Nicky. Leisurely or not, uphill was a bitch of a climb. She was glad Nicky didn't offer to help, though. She was a Marine, for God's sake. She'd stomped through mud and sand with seventy-five pounds of gear on her back. 

"Andy took me up there yesterday." Nile set her fists on her hips. She took a gulp of air and said without thinking, "After you and Joe left for the safe house." 

"Ah," Nicky exhaled.

Nile grimaced.

"It is a good place," Nicky said as Nile opened her mouth to apologize. He turned back to gaze up the hill. 

"When's the last time you were here?" 

Nicky made a thoughtful sound. He reached up and scratched behind his ear.

"After Booker joined us, no, much later. We were supposed to go to America from Madrid, but we went here first. Around 1858? No, 59, I think?" Nicky tugged at a clump of hair that was long enough to tuck behind his ear.

"There was one of his things in Madrid." 

"Biffoli's sketchbook." Nile clamped her mouth shut. _Damn it, girl._

Nicky looked startled, but after a moment, he nodded. Long fingers dug furrows into his hair as if he was smoothing it back but then returned to pulling at the lock of hair behind his ear as if he wasn't sure if he wanted it behind his ear or not. 

"The owner told us he bought it in Sicily. Andy insisted we come here. She said she missed the horses. We stayed for a year before going to America." 

"I didn't see any," Nile blurted as she watched Nicky scratch and tug at the strands of hair behind his ear. The patch of skin turned red, healed, then red again from the deep digging of nails. "Were there a lot of horses then?"

Nicky lowered his hand and gazed down at Nile. His eyes held the same young-old gleam. They felt like they were both boring through her and seeing everything. It reminded Nile again he hadn't been much older than her, even if he was far older than she could ever imagine. 

However, watching Nicky as he tried to casually slip blood tipped fingers into his hoodie's pocket, Nile forgot about his centuries and wanted to pull him into a fierce hug. 

"No," Nicky said regretfully, "when we returned, there were no more horses. The land had changed too much when we came back." 

Nicky looked about the summit and the forgotten footpath. He looked lost. 

"There's still the gazebo," Nile reminded him.

Blue-gray eyes drifted to Nile. 

" _Si_." Nicky smiled shyly. Nicky turned back towards their goal, his stride purposeful. "There is still the gazebo."


	10. Chapter 10

It actually looked scarier the second time around. How was that possible? Even the rusty warning sign swung more ominously.

Nicky's brow furrowed. He poked the sign, tsking when it swung from the chain with an ear-piercing screech.

"Yeah," Nile sighed. "Andy was annoyed they let it get like this. Didn't stop her from climbing over that damn sign—just like you're doing right now." 

Nile begrudgingly followed Nicky over the barricade and into the aged shelter.

"Andy?" Nicky sounded disapproving even as he walked across groaning wooden planks to the remaining railing to sit. Shit, hadn't there been two yesterday?

Still not used to being immortal, Nile was too busy having an internal freak out over whether century-old wood's ability to hold up her ass. So she realized a little late on the uptake that she had accidentally narced on Andy.

"Uh, yeah?" Nile hedged as Nicky sat down on the same spot as Andy had and the entire structure shuddered. Nicky didn't even look up when the rafter above him sagged further. "To be fair, the thing only _looked_ like it was going to collapse because…I mean, clearly it hasn't yet."

Nicky nodded absentmindedly. He gazed out to the horizon. 

"If you're looking for Bracia," Nile murmured, "Andy said it was over in that direction."

Nicky didn't follow where Nile pointed to. He nodded once more. He continued staring out into a gray-blue sky. It looked like it might rain. It looked like Nicky's eyes.

Nile's shoulders slumped. She lowered herself to the ground and sat across from Nicky. She idly picked brambles off the hem of her jeans. 

The gazebo was a mix of wood and stone, a gray and black veined rock Nile vaguely thought she learned about in high school geology. 

Nile squinted at one stone that made the border, under the railing Nicky sat on. Moss hugged the brick and invaded the rock itself, filling the cracks with oily green clumps. But despite the veins of green running through, the carving on it was unmistakable. 

A sun with a crescent moon within.

"Hey, isn't that..." 

Nicky tilted his eyes downward. A small smile flitted across his face.

"Our signal." Nicky didn't seem surprised Nile knew what it was. "Joe carved it the first time we were here. He carved it to remind me."

"Remind you?" Nile studied the stone. 

"That we will always find each other." Nicky stared at the stone below him. "That symbol marked where he found me when I thought I was lost." He grimaced. "I was up here a lot back then."

"It's pretty up here," Nile offered.

Nicky scanned their surroundings. "Yes, it is. Perhaps that was why." 

At Nile's look, Nicky lifted a shoulder.

"I do not remember much." Nicky turned back to the horizon. "After Madrid. I know I came up here a lot. Joe always found me here. Sometimes Andy was with me. Even Booker, but that was later. I do not remember it all. I was like a ship in a fog." 

Nile's thought of Andy and Nicky with their newly shorn heads, sitting upon the highest point in shared silence before later submerging themselves in someone else's war. 

She stared out at the view and then back at the rough brick and wood that must have been painted a mint green along with the splintered trim at some point. The stone base must have been too heavy for the hill, though. Nile could see cracks running along it from here; parts were separating off from the main structure. 

"It's amazing the gazebo survived this long," Nile said, desperate to fill the silence. Nicky wasn't talkative, but the silences he offered in place of conversation were normally filled with something safe and warm.

"The first time we were here," Nicky muttered, "This was just built. This high up, it was quiet."

It still was. They hadn't passed another person. Nile studied Nicky's profile, his eyes hooded as they pulled away from the stone and went back out to the skies. Eventually, his eyes slid shut, his chin lowered. He sheltered deep within the folds of the hoodie, letting the deep collar turtle around him.

Nile held her tongue. She stared at the ground. She wondered if Nicky was praying. She wondered if she should offer the tiny cross around her neck. It felt like she should do something.

"He stopped sketching, you know," Nicky suddenly said.

Nile glanced up, brow furrowing.

"Joe. After the first time we were here," Nicky clarified. "He started drawing again when we had dreams about Booker." He shrugged. "It was the only way to identify Booker and where he could be."

"Joe's good," Nile murmured. She'd caught a glimpse of Joe's current sketchbook. She also remembered a pewter chest in that abandoned mine. The chest had been tucked behind a Byzantine helmet. It had been overflowing with yellowed leather-bound sketchbooks. She hadn't made the connection right away, but she knew now those must all have been Joe's. 

Nicky rubbed his hands up and down his khakis. He didn't look warm enough to sit out here in the Italian autumn morning.

"Had to stop him from burning his books," Nicky continued. "Said he could not bear holding a piece of charcoal again after..." He grimaced as he glanced down at his own legs. 

"His drawings were beautiful, as far back as we go, from the beginning, it was always a pleasure to him. His skill nurtured and ripened for centuries. If any artist deserved renown, it is him, not Biffoli."

Nile's thought of Andy's cave of treasures. The Rodin and that trunk of art sketches. She stared at her hands and sighed.

"It was meant to be a joke," Nile said, almost relieved she was finally able to say it to Nicky, yet she couldn't look at him. "When I saw it, I thought—I—you know what? I'm not sure what I was thinking."

Nicky continued running his palms up and down his thighs. 

"When I first came to Canzoa. When I saw Biffoli's sketches," Nicky said, "All I could think was Joe will be following me. Here. To this place where a demon hunts those who share his face."

Nicky's pale hands clenched and then disappeared back into the pockets of his hoodie.

"I thought: I must stop him before Joe gets here." Nicky huffed and looked over to Nile. "But then the hunted became the hunter again. I was foolish. I was blinded by fear and certain I could—"

"It wasn't your fault," Nile blurted. Inwardly, she winced. 

"I know." Nicky smiled wearily. "They do not let me forget that."

"You shouldn't," Nile agreed with feeling.

Nicky's smile widened, but quickly, it dimmed. 

"I had a problem understanding." Nicky shrugged. 

"Understanding what?"

"We have faced wars, plagues, even the madness of witch trials and genocides," Nicky said. He frowned towards the horizon.

"The many massed together to do harm, hiding behind false justifications or sometimes misguided fears. We have seen it too many times. But true evil can not be blamed entirely on a king, or a pope, or..." 

"Yeah," Nile said when Nicky drifted off. 

"He..." Nicky closed his eyes, his mouth pursing as he struggled for words.

Nile wanted to drop her eyes. Instead, she forced her gaze to stay on Nicky. She waited. 

"Biffoli believed he was the heir to Bernini's legacy." Nicky swallowed, his lips thinned. "He thought fame was the path to immortality."

Nicky massaged his throat. A muscle in his jaw jumped.

"But he was just one man," Nicky said finally. "No one ordered him. His mind ruled him, no one else. He just decided to do this thing." 

Nicky sounded so bewildered. Nile closed her eyes because also seeing it on Nicky's face made it worse. 

"He wanted Bernini's skill in capturing the soul. He tried to see how much a body, a soul, can endure and capture that suffering on stone. He then discarded them into the river to be swept out to sea when the body failed to satisfy him."

Nicky uttered something soft, rolling like Italian but mysterious like a prayer.

"I thought dispatching him would be the end of it. But he caught me, choked me and witnessed my revival. After several tries, he realized what he had."

"The very thing he wanted," Nile whispered.

Nicky sighed. "Even then, faced with his madness, I thought 'he is just a man' and now, with me in his grasp, his hunger will sate. He will no longer need the others."

A breeze drifted past between them. But Nile shivered more from the heavy pause.

"I made him worse."

Nile's breath caught.

Nicky closed his eyes again. A hand floated out, feebly gesturing something only he knew.

"He pushed the physical limits of what a body could take. When he tried before, they died, with me he perfected them and..." Nicky exhaled. 

"And then he took three others. "

Nile's eyes widened. She stared at Nicky, but he kept his head low, his hand out like a music conductor.

"Before, he only took one at a time, fearing detection. When he discovered my secret, he was certain it meant God had sent me to show him the way. If he did not have me, he would not have been so bold as to..." Nicky shook his head. His body seemed to sink lower on the railing.

"There are things I forgot of my time there," Nicky murmured, "But I will never forget their cries, their pleas to go home, their fear, their hopelessness..."

Nile's eyes lowered to the ground.

" _Scusi_ ," Nicky muttered, although it wasn't clear what he was apologizing for. His hands slipped back into the front pocket. He hunched forward, exhaling in and out until Nile realized Nicky was murmuring a prayer.

Nile closed her eyes. She could see the statue, luminescent in all its polished white. She had wanted to touch it, drawn to it like the statues she once saw in the Victoria Albert. The white stone glowed, carved to mimic fabric and muscles so real. She touched those and was shocked by how warm they felt. She had wanted to touch that statue before she'd realized whose face was on it.

"Joe said you got yourself out." Nile curled a hand around her own wrist as if she could pull back her own hand from memory.

"Biffoli kept all of us drugged so we would not fight him when he..." Nicky cleared his throat, rounded his shoulders back within his hoodie. 

"I remember..." A raw sound rumbled out of Nicky's throat. "His fist in my hair...how he smelled..." 

Nicky shook his head. 

"One day, after he finished with me..." Nicky stared out into the horizon, his jaw flexing, "most of what he gave me had faded. I could finally move a little..."

Nicky extended both hands, spread them a short width apart.

"There was a chisel close by. He was going to carve my face out of the rock underneath us. It was his final piece, the masterpiece to immortality. In his euphoria, he was careless. When he got off me, he turned me around, and I..."

Nicky made a sort of a sharp motion, his right hand slicing the air.

"His howl..." Nicky smiled grimly. "He bled all over me. I struck a fatal blow, but he stumbled away before I could do anything more. And he left us there for..."

Nicky's shoulders rose and dropped again. 

"I do not know how long. Everything was hazy," Nicky murmured. "I think I died twice, no, maybe, I do not know…" He exhaled unsteadily. 

"I got free from my shackles." Nicky looked uncertain. "I remember my bones grinding as I crawled off the stone. The next, I was across the cellar and Joe was there with blood all over his face."

"Joe said you were missing for six days," Nile supplied. She winced. "I mean, Andy and Joe told me some things, not everything, I wasn't trying to—"

"It is all right, Nile," Nicky said quietly. 

"No," Nile snapped, "it's not."

Nicky fell silent. He stared at Nile, his expression blank.

"I'm not doing this right," Nile apologized. 

Nicky's lips twisted. "There is no right way to any of this." He pointed over his shoulder to his left.

"There used to be a church there. They were the ones who built this gazebo. The second World War destroyed the church, but the gazebo survived."

Nicky shrugged again. 

"I could not understand." Nicky frowned to himself. "I could not make sense of why." 

"I don't think anyone can," Nile murmured.

"They would call him, a, ah, visionary killer." Nicky smiled self-deprecatingly at Nile's eyebrow. 

"There was a book. It was the first one I had seen on such ideas. It was by Hans Gross." He grimaced. "The 1890s were not very helpful. Later, we needed to watch over someone, in secret. It was 1992. She was going to university." Nicky lifted his shoulders once more. "She was in a criminal psychology course and I thought…"

"Nicky," Nile breathed, dismayed.

Nicky's lips quirked. "Booker looked like that when I asked him to trick the school's computer into letting me in." His eyes drifted back to the carving on the floor. "Joe was not happy, but he did not stop me either."

"He knew you wanted to finally understand," Nile said, her stomach sinking at the thought. "Did it help?" She swallowed when Nicky shook his head. 

"But I thought at least it was over." Nicky grimaced. "Nothing of his works resurfaced after a century. Joe and I hoped the Nazis destroyed them if any were found during the War. Most of his pieces were graphic. And much of Europe was bombed. But..."

"They were hidden. The earthquake," Nile said around the returning lump in her throat. "And me."

"Things happen for a reason, Nile." Nicky attempted another smile. "Perhaps this was a kinder way for you to find out."

Nile choked. "This? This was kinder?"

Nicky nodded, tight-lipped. "Booker's revelation was harsher."

"Madrid." 

Nicky winced.

"We needed papers. Official papers to travel. Booker heard of this man in Madrid who could get them. This man heard of a Sebastian who could copy anything. In exchange for the paperwork, he wanted Booker to copy a book of sketches he wished to sell but not truly part ways with."

Nile gulped. "One of Biffoli's sketchbooks."

Nicky leaned his head back, suddenly fascinated with the torn remains of the ceiling. 

"I waited while Booker examined the book in the upstairs study." Nicky frowned to himself. "That man...I did not like how he looked at me, but we needed the papers."

Nile winced in sympathy. 

"All of a sudden, Booker charged into our room, shouting and his eyes wild. Said we were leaving and dragged me out with something large in a sack he refused to let me see."

Nile's eyes rounded. "Whoa."

Nicky scoffed. "He meant well. The man chased us, shouting 'Thief!' The book fell out during the struggle and the pages scattered all over the path by the river Manzanares."

"What happened after that?" Nile breathed.

Nicky frowned to himself. He absently ran a hand through his hair. "Not sure what happened after that, not clearly, it was long ago."

Brown eyes slid over to Nile. Nicky held himself still as he waited. 

Nile pulled a grin that felt like it made her face crack. 

"Booker probably gave the guy a beat down, huh?" 

Nicky chuckled, gratitude in his eyes. "He tried, but he had drunk too much wine. He wasn't very coordinated. But he bound the man to a tree. And then he tore up every page. He called the tied-up little man…something unpleasant, roared 'Émile, we are leaving,' and dragged me away."

"Émile?" 

Nicky's amusement faded to something sadder. "His son. Oldest, I believe. Booker had trouble accepting Joe and I were older than we appeared. The drawings upset him at a time when he was still adjusting."

"I think he'd have been upset even if he was sober. Hell, I..." Nile swallowed. She wanted to punch something, but centuries-old wood would be a bad idea. 

"To you," Nicky said gently, "this felt like it happened recently. But Nile, this was centuries ago."

"And does it feel like centuries for you? Really?" Nile stared at Nicky, her stomach knotting. 

"Is that what's it going to be like as an immortal? Avoid talking about stuff like this; act like it's nothing until the shit hits the fan and brings it all up again?"

"No. But we survive past it." Nicky tucked his hands into his pocket. He took a steadying breath. He was quiet again. "We live on."

Nile ran a nail down the yellow contrast stitching on her jeans. Trying to wrap her head around this. She listened to Nicky's slow breathing and found herself matching it. Her stomach still roiled, though, but hearing Nicky calmed her.

Nicky coughed delicately. 

Then said, "Andromache…Andy…" Nicky paused and studied Nile's face. 

Nile nodded for him to go on.

"She detests a certain smell," Nicky continued in a hesitant voice. "She claims she does not remember why, but we avoid it when we can otherwise..." He winced, touching his chest distractedly. 

"Booker avoids a particular vintage wine because it reminds him of his beloved. When he first joined us, everything tasted like a reminder, so he drowned himself with the taste of alcohol instead. And Joe..." 

Nicky cleared his throat. 

"There are certain things that bother Joe, sounds and tastes that made him lash out. He used to avoid me when he was like this because he feared hurting me again."

"Oh," Nile fumbled. She wasn't sure if she should hear any of this. She ducked her head. Thanking Nicky felt wrong. 

"I am not telling you this to be cruel or to betray them. I wanted you to understand. For us, it has been centuries," Nicky said, not unkindly. 

"There are things we remember why and some we do not. But what the mind forgets, the heart remembers, so no: it does not feel like it happened long ago. It does not feel like nothing. Many times, over many years, I truly did not think about what happened to me."

Nicky crouched down to the stone. He settled the flat of his hand over the carving.

"And then there were times," Nicky murmured, "it felt like it was happening right then. I forget and became lost and I despaired. My peace was gone."

Nicky brushed a thumb across the surface, clearing moss over one cut, curved elegant despite the rough surface. 

"When that happens, someone reads Arabic poems so the night is safer, chases off memories with drunken fists, or carves warm beacons into cold rock. There was always someone to remind me. I am all right. I am here. And we have many more memories to make than of one man's evil."

"Joe does that for you," Nile murmured, smiling. Joe wasn't the only poet.

"And Andy. Even Booker tried, in his own way." Nicky glanced over his shoulder, his hand still on the stone.

"And now you?"

"Hell, yeah." Nile blinked rapidly. Her nose was suddenly all stuffed up. She sniffed loudly. "Damn right, you have me." 

"And you have us," Nicky returned. Something in his gaze warmed. "I hope you will never need us like that, but you have it."

"Thanks." Nile smiled lopsidedly. Nile jumped to her feet before Nicky could offer a hand. She brushed off her jeans. She paused. 

"Hey, Nicky?" 

Nicky's head canted towards Nile expectantly.

"I am sorry," Nile said firmly. She looked at him square in the eye. 

"Someone once told me only a kind heart regrets. So it deserves forgiveness." Nicky smiled to himself, his eyes distant in private memory. 

With a quiet exhale, Nicky turned to directly face Nile. His gaze was blue like distant oceans as they lingered on Nile. 

"I forgive you, Nile Freeman," Nicky said solemnly.

Nile's eyes burned. She took a deep breath, pushing down the sob that wanted to break free.

"Can I hug you?" Nile croaked.

Nicky hesitated. 

"Maybe later?" Nile guessed softly.

Nicky grimaced, shrugging one shoulder then the other. He gestured vaguely at himself. "Right now, not a good idea?"

"It's why I asked first," Nile murmured. 

Nicky dipped his head, looking strangely ancient doing so. "So…an IOU?"

"IOU," Nile agreed. "But I gotta warn you: I give mad awesome hugs."

"And I have to warn you," Nicky countered as he easily stepped over the chain and waited for Nile to follow. "Joe likes hugging. He may want to join in."

"Uh. Okay. Weird." Nile hopped over the chain. "Is that some kind of immortal group hug thing?"

"Perhaps. Although Andy will not agree to one. You must catch her unawares."

"Wow. Shocker." Nile snorted. She glanced over her shoulder back at the gazebo. Maybe she could convince the guys to come back and fix the thing again. "Wish I can do more than some IOU, though."

"Everything is gone," Nicky reminded her. "And we do not know where."

Nile scowled. She stopped in her tracks.

"No, I don't buy that." 

"Nile?"

Nile jerked her head down the hill back to town.

"Come on, Ms. Liberté wants to go shopping."


	11. Chapter 11

Nothing like spending a quarter of mil in Euros to loosen tongues. They forgot the "not at liberty to say" schtick after Nicky mused out loud Andy might like the hundred thousand Euros two-handed daggers. She suspected Nicky has a better poker face than Joe.

Despite his willingness, Nicky began to look hunted the longer they were in the gallery. Devon and Leo stood too close, gushed too loud and crowded into him and Nile as they offered to show them one more interesting thing. 

Nile intervened; she lied about being late for another appointment. She and Nicky balked when Leo eagerly offered to drive them anywhere in his personal Jag. 

Since they got the buyers' names, Nile thought they were heading back to the safe house once they'd made their escape. But without warning, Nicky abruptly veered left. She caught a glimpse of the cream and gold galley bags—Nicky had refused to believe chivalry was a lost art—disappearing around a corner. She gave chase. 

Nile skidded to a halt in front of the gelateria that was the original meet up point. At a small metal café table, Joe greeted them with a raised plastic container filled with pale green pistachio gelato. Next to him, Andy was scowling down into her—

"What the hell is that?" Nile stared at the pinkest monstrosity she had ever seen overflowing a plastic bowl.

"He," Andy jabbed towards Joe with a sharp finger, "said they have baklava flavored and if I left the sheep alone, he'd buy me one."

"Wait, what happened with the shee—no, I don't wanna know." Nile arched an eyebrow at the globe—the only way to describe it—in front of Andy. 

"Andy, I don't think he got you baklava."

"I did," Joe insisted. He gestured towards Andy's vibrant pink mountain with his spoon. "It's strawberry ricotta and raspberry, too. The baklava one is somewhere in the bottom."

"You are helping me with this." Andy brandished a spoon towards Nile.

"Only if you let me take a picture of you with it," Nile replied. She snorted at Andy's scowl. "Okay, next time."

Nile dropped down in a seat between Joe and Andy. Just in case.

"Oh yeah," Andy growled and smacked Nile's very neon green post-it on the middle of Nile's forehead. 

"Ow!"

"Do not stick these things on my cuffs."

Joe canted his head to Nicky as he slipped into the seat by Joe. Joe's smile faded.

Nicky shook his head. 

Joe's brow furrowed, but he nodded. He wordlessly turned the bowl, revealing the extra spoon stabbed into the bottom scoop. He waited. 

Nicky eyed Joe's gelato. He huffed after a moment of contemplation.

"Pistachio again?" Nicky said lightly. He pulled out the spoon and tried it. Just once and didn't try another spoonful, but Joe beamed like Nicky had eaten the whole dessert.

"It's what I love," Joe said, somewhat unsteadily. He smiled, his cheeks puffing up, his eyes overly bright. "That never changes. How many times must I remind you?"

Nicky shared a small smile with Nile. 

"As many times as you wish," Nicky murmured, bumping his knee against Joe's under the table.


	12. Chapter 12

Nile grimaced with Nicky as Joe paced. She sank deeper into her armchair. She regretted not taking the seat by Nicky. Even with the hoodie on and the little furnace clunking out heat, Nicky looked cold.

Andy was worryingly silent, sharpening one of the daggers from the gallery with a whetstone balanced on her lap.

"And do we know anything about them?" Joe looked tempted to throw himself down next to Nicky on the couch. Sharp eyes scanned Nicky. Joe abruptly sat down by Nicky's feet instead.

Nile's laptop squawked when she tried to open another window with yet another browser. She groaned when her tab closed without warning. Again.

"Nothing," Nile grumbled, "As soon as I try to type Mr. and Mrs. Knyga, my laptop has a fit. Whoever they are, their info is locked tight." She paused, her stomach clenching.

"You don't suppose it's like uh, one of those corporate guys?" Nile tried. She wished she didn't say anything when everyone tensed.

"Copley said he was keeping an eye on those people," Andy muttered.

The dagger whined as it went across the whetstone too fast.

Out of the corner of Nile's eye, Nicky shifted, his knee pressed against Joe's shoulder. She turned back to her laptop, throat working. Her fingers pounded harder than necessary into her keyboard as she tried that dark web link Copley once mentioned.

As soon as Nile hit "enter," her laptop squealed and crashed.

"Fuck!" Nile glared at her darkened screen. She shook her head when Andy frowned. "Nothing. Maybe we should see if Copley ca—"

"No," Andy said sharply. "This is a matter for us. Anything hits us stays with us."

Us. Not Nile and them. But 'us.' 

"Got it," Nile said decisively. "There are other things I could try."

Andy glanced over to Nicky. Her dagger stilled.

"If Nile wants to try," Nicky said quietly, "let her."

"It's a few weeks before Copenhagen," Nile spoke up just as softly, "no reason why we can't prep for it here. We could stick around, maybe?"

"It's a good idea," Joe murmured. He tilted his head up, gazing at Nicky upside down. 

Nicky replied, his words almost melodious in his reply. 

Andy smiled grimly. Her eyes slid over to Nile and her smile softened.

Nile couldn't resist adding, "And we should fix that gazebo while we're at it before Andy really does fall out of the damn thing."

Andy's smile flipped.

Joe muttered darkly. He tossed Andy a mild frown. Nicky dropped a hand on Joe's shoulder, squeezed and stayed. Joe turned his head and dropped a kiss on Nicky's knee.

Nile caught Andy smiling at them, her gaze drifting back to Nile with a gleam of approval. Warmth bloomed in Nile's chest. She checked her laptop, but Nile wanted to ask Andy if she could borrow her ax after another failed search.

"Seriously," Nile groaned. "You can't tell me one of them didn't use Google at least on—"

In Nile's back pocket, her phone trilled. In fact, all of their phones did. 

Andy's eyes narrowed. She pulled out her burner phone, staring at it a beat before swiping a finger across the screen.

Nile held her phone like Joe and Nicky, waiting.

Andy's eyebrow rose. 

It was the permission they needed. Together, they gazed at the text from an 'unknown caller' and its single line of coordinates.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus concludes my first The Old Guard fanfic. Thank you all for your generous comments and for giving this fic a chance.

The next text came as they pulled up to the shipping yard a few hours later and only to Andy's phone. 

Joe muttered that it wasn't worrying at all. It was all he said before he and Nicky slipped out of the back seat to do recon.

Nile rested a hand on her left knee to stop it from jittering up and down.

"I keep telling you: relax," Andy murmured from the driver's seat. It was hard to read Andy with her shades on, but her posture was loose. It was as if she was sprawled in an armchair, not sitting in the driver's seat of a twenty-year-old white Volvo, in front of a warehouse even the elderly dock-master struggled to locate. 

Nile gawked at Andy. "You tell me to relax then gave me two k-bars, a Sig, the Glock and the M4."

"I said to relax, not to be stupid," Andy muttered. Her lips barely moved. Her right trigger finger tapped out the seconds on the steering wheel.

On the three hundredth tap, Joe popped up from around the stacks of shipping boxes, Nicky close behind like a shadow. 

"Clear," Joe reported as he and Nicky slipped into the backseat. 

"Nothing high or low," Nicky confirmed.

"Andy?" Nile looked over. "What do you think?"

Andy pulled her hands off the steering wheel. She leaned forward, staring intently at the warehouse. She checked her phone again and Nile caught the tail end of the last text, warning Andy to make sure Joe and Nicky stayed outside. What the hell?

"I think," Andy said slowly, "I should go in alone."

\-----

It was the longest thirty seconds Nile had ever had to wait through. Before the chorus of Nile and Joe's "Hell, no." and Nicky's "No, _assolutamente no_ " clashed with Andy's imperious, "Wait here." 

She'd levered herself out the car door, "I mean it, I have a plan."

Which is how Nile found herself pressed back on one side of the warehouse door, Joe and Nicky covering the windows on the other. She could hear Andy's deliberate footsteps, her ax in her right hand, a damn 9mm in her left because she'd vetoed Nile's Glock. Andy trusted her ax and fists more.

There wasn't time to appreciate how badass Andy was, not when Nile was standing on the outside. 

There was a vague sense of déjà vu of when she, Dizzy, and Jordan had stood by, waiting for the all-clear. They didn't look at each other. They didn't dare, but the sense of her friends' presence soothed the wire cinched tight around her throat.

Just like now. Joe and Nicky was a reassuring presence at the edge of her awareness. Even with Andy entering unknown territory by herself, Nile found it easier to breathe with the two on her six. 

Although that breathing thing was getting harder the longer Andy took. This was the longest damn thirty seconds ever. 

Then out of nowhere, Andy uttered a sound: foreign, ancient but recognizable as a curse.

"Andy?" Nile hissed. It'd only been nineteen seconds, but screw it, she'd charge in. And she could see Joe and Nicky were about to.

"I'm good," Andy called out. After a pause, she tightly added, "Nicky, you and Joe wait a minute. Just Nile."

Nile shot Joe and Nicky a baffled look. The pair scowled back but relented. Nicky grabbed the door handle and pulled it open for her. Joe darted to Nile's side to cover her before nodding for her to proceed. 

With a deep breath, Nile let her Sig lead the way in.

Andy looked grim, standing a few meters into the space. 

"Clear," Andy said, clipped. She gestured to Nile it was safe to lower her weapon. 

When Nile saw what Andy stood in front of, Nile wanted to open fire anyway.

The warehouse's windows that ran the length of the structure were too high and dirty to allow enough light in. But the gleam of white stone glowed enough to reveal the cluttered pile of marble and parchment on the painted floor. Four long-handled mallets laid out in front of the collection like some damn shrine offering. 

"Shit," Nile breathed. Behind her, she heard footsteps, Andy's hissed "I said to wait" and Nicky's faint " _dio santo_."

"Nile," Joe said tersely, "Are those..."

Nile crouched down and shone her smartphone's light on one statue lying sideways on the ground. She raised her phone and cast the thin beam of light on the other statues. Joe uttered a harsh sound behind her before he murmured, "Nicolo" in a gentler tone.

"...eight, nine," Nile counted. She breathed out. "Yeah, nine. They're from the gallery. All of them."

Paper rustled.

"There's a few sketchbooks and scrolls as well." Andy threw one book away from her with a growl. "Is that everything?"

Seeing all laid out before her, Nile was struck with the thought of these out there, waiting to be revealed, revered, lauded. When they were created from nothing but suffering. She recalled Joe's vow to find all of them. Something hot welled up her throat as she included herself in that vow now too. The bastard didn't deserve to be remembered.

"Nile?" Andy bit out. Light from her phone swung towards Nile.

"Yeah," Nile managed. "Yeah, I think that's all of them. Andy..." She glanced over to Joe and Nicky, then Andy. "What the hell?"

The three looked at each other, saying nothing. 

Andy suddenly shook her head. 

"Andy?" Nile eyed Joe shifting a step closer to Nicky. Nicky stared at the ground, his jaw clenching.

"Knyga," Andy said. She sighed. "It's Lithuanian."

"For?" Nile dragged out the word, but no one jumped in to translate. "Guys, what does it translate to?" 

Nicky shook his head. He seemed to shrink under his hood.

"Yusuf?" Nicky murmured. He sounded dazed.

Joe murmured something only Nicky could hear. Nicky bobbed his head, barely discernable under the cover over his head. To Nile's surprise, Nicky shuffled out, Joe brushing two fingers down Nicky's right arm as he followed. The two left the warehouse but stayed by the door. 

Nicky abruptly sat on his heels, his longsword banging on the ground. Joe bent in an awkward stoop, balanced between a crouch and a hunch. He blocked Nicky from view, his voice a low rumble of words for Nicky's ears only. 

"Andy?" Nile turned back, but Andy was studying something in her hand. It looked familiar.

"Hey, that's like your book." Nile accepted the small volume from Andy. She opened it. Her eyes narrowed as she picked out a familiar word.

"Wait, Joe said they were in Arabic."

"Translated to French," Joe said as he and Nicky returned. He made a face at the book. "I still think you lose something in translation." 

Nile fumbled out her phone and pulled up her browser. She typed 'Knyga.' 

"Oh. It's Lithuanian for book," Nile breathed. She glanced up with wide eyes.

"It's your call," Andy said to Joe and Nicky. Her gaze lingered on Nile. "All of you."

Nile looked down at the book. It was thin; it fitted in her hand. It looked like it was repaired over and over, the binding stitch new at some parts. The back cover was plain, a brown weathered leather surface, saved for a stamp at the lower-left corner. 

A sun with a crescent moon within.

"I think we don't have enough mallets," Nile murmured. She glanced up and caught Andy studying her. "That's what I think."

Joe brushed a knuckle across Nicky's brow. He adjusted the hood over Nicky's forehead before he turned around and gave Andy a curt nod.

Andy smiled tightly, crossed over to Nile and plucked the phone out of her hands.

"Really?" Nile complained. 

"You have his current number," Andy said calmly. She favored a sputtering Nile with an eyebrow as she dialed the number.

Nile never called it and didn't know how long it'll be before he picks up or if he would at all. But even from where she stood, she heard the line connect immediately, a tinny voice demanded, "Nile? What's wrong? Are they okay?"

"Hey, asshole, you forgot your book," Andy rasped. She stepped over to Joe and Nicky, the phone to her ear, but her eyes were on them. "How soon can you get here?"

The phone was silent for so long, Nile thought Andy had lost the connection. Andy grunted at the reply that came after a few minutes. 

"This doesn't change everything," Andy warned into the phone. "But it could be a start."

Before Andy ended the call, Joe grabbed the phone out of Andy's hand. He didn't greet the speaker. 

"Bring your own mallet," Joe growled. He hung up the phone, passed it to Nicky, who tossed it back to Nile.

The phone was warm by the time it had been returned to Nile. As she wrapped her hand around her phone, something slid into place inside her. She thought about statues and conversations she thought she wasn't privy to. In a loose circle, she stood there with three, possibly soon to be four, closing ranks. Not around her, but with her. Nicky was right: she has this, this odd set of people with their weird, outdated jokes and random stories, and scary memories. 

Nile considered the book in her hand. She tested its weight and peered up at Nicky.

"My Arabic is terrible," Nile said lightly. "Could there be a Spanish one for me?" 

Joe muttered under his breath that they were all unappreciative. But he smiled at Nile as he reached out and slipped his palm across the cover. 

"It would be our honor," Joe murmured. Joe's fingers reached back and plucked the edge of Nicky's long sleeve. Nicky curled a loose hand under Joe's elbow.

Nile grinned watery at Joe and Nicky. They smiled back and Nile thought about all the other museums they'd no doubt get her kicked out of, all the times Andy was going to run Nile through hoops, and maybe, just maybe, someone would finally help her with her French. 

Maybe she really would get to cash in that IOU for a group hug after all.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _San Martino_ (published 1887)  
> by _Giosuè Carducci_
> 
> _La nebbia agli irti colli  
>  piovigginando sale,  
> e sotto il maestrale  
> urla e biancheggia il mar;_
> 
> _ma per le vie del borgo  
>  dal ribollir de’ tini  
> va l’aspro odor dei vini  
> l’anime a rallegrar._
> 
> _Gira su’ ceppi accesi  
>  lo spiedo scoppiettando:  
> sta il cacciator fischiando  
> su l’uscio a rimirar_
> 
> _tra le rossastre nubi  
>  stormi d’uccelli neri,  
> com’esuli pensieri,  
> nel vespero migrar._
> 
>   
> Translation:  
> Can be seen read here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_qkTh6oKkg&feature=youtu.be
> 
> The fog to the steep hills  
> amid the rain ascends,  
> and under the mistral  
> the sea screams and whitens:
> 
> but through the alleys of the village  
> from the bubbling vats  
> goes the sour smell of wine  
> the souls to rejoice.
> 
> Turns on burning logs  
> the spit, sputtering;  
> stands the hunter whistling  
> on the door to gaze
> 
> among the reddish clouds  
> flocks of blackbirds  
> as exiled thoughts,  
> in the twilight migrating.

**Author's Note:**

> This would not exist without Ellie. And Luca's soulful eyes. LOL.
> 
> Come say hi at Tumblr: [https://d8rkmessngr.tumblr.com/](https://d8rkmessngr.tumblr.com)


End file.
